Bannon's War Room Episode 5337 analyzes Democrats' fight against conservative redistricting assaults, citing Florida's rigged map under DeSantis and the Supreme Court's 6-3 ruling that effectively voids Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The discussion extends to Iran-U.S. tensions with oil prices surging past $120, Federal Reserve rate stability despite dissent, and Pete Hegseth's meritless indictment. Ultimately, the episode argues for a maximalist redistricting strategy to eliminate Democratic districts while warning that current judicial decisions threaten fundamental voting protections akin to an existential nuclear threat. [Automatically generated summary]
Democrats are fighting the conservative assault on voting and voting rights.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announcing that she's now working with the state legislature to change their redistricting process.
This after Florida Republicans just pushed through a rigged congressional map during a special legislative session convened at the request of Governor Ron DeSantis.
The map could create four additional House seats for Republicans.
All of this coming in the wake of the Supreme Court eviscerating what is left of the Voting Rights Act.
In a 6-3 decision, the court ruled that Louisiana's congressional map, created to protect the rights of black voters in that state, relied too heavily on race.
Justice Samuel Alito said for the majority that, quote, plaintiffs fail to show an objective likelihood of intentional discrimination.
In her dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the decision, quote, renders Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act all but a dead letter.
This ruling goes well beyond the Louisiana map.
Effectively voids one of the last remnants of the Voting Rights Act without directly overturning the law and opens the door for more partisan congressional maps that undercut voters' political power.
And we're doing that with the Supreme Court putting weights on our ankles.
Okay, that's where we are.
The Supreme Court's decision today is one of the most disingenuous.
Legal opinions I've read in my entire life.
They have scuttled stare decisis, which is the principle that requires the court to follow its own precedent so that we have reliable doctrine to use as we craft the laws that will govern our society and we get the holdings and interpretations from this court.
They also trampled on Congress's authority with our government.
That requires separation of powers and respect for congressional authority to issue legislation pursuant to its authority under the Constitution.
That's exactly what the Voting Rights Act is.
It's been lifted up by this very institution, the Supreme Court, as the crown jewel of civil rights legislation.
They upheld its constitutionality for years and years amid many challenges by similarly disgruntled voters and those who didn't believe that black people should have.
Protections for the right to vote.
The Supreme Court has defended it up until today.
And also the right to vote.
The right to vote is sacrosanct.
The Supreme Court has held for well over a century that it is preservative of all rights.
But today, we saw a Supreme Court justice joined by five others twist the law, write, and effectively lie on page in saying that they were doing very little.
Updating a test, they were only clarifying some points of law.
But what they ultimately did was make it utterly impossible to enforce Section 2 in a way that can protect black voters, Latino voters, Native American voters, and other voters who are routinely subject to voter discrimination, and especially in the area of redistricting, where votes are diluted by drawing voters into lines or spreading them out across districts so that they have no ability.
To elect candidates of their choice and therefore don't have adequate representation in our governing bodies.
I mean, that means we got to go in there and take out this regime because you can't unring the bell of being able to develop nuclear technology.
If that's his standard, then regime change is the only answer.
And if it's not his standard, then what is an acceptable level of protection?
And the fact that he doesn't know that 60 days into the war, with all of the cost of this war, the economic chaos, the lives lost, You know, we don't seem to know, sorry, the Trump administration doesn't seem to know where they're going, and they think they can just shout, nuclear weapons, nuclear weapons, they're bad.
Therefore, that proves we're right.
It doesn't.
We seem to be stuck, and they don't want to explain how they're going to get us unstuck.
On the one hand, they've really come out as a major player in the effort to try and end the Iran-U.S. war.
They'll recall that the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi was actually here in Russia a couple of days ago to brief Vladimir Putin, and now this one and a half hour call with President Trump.
The Russians saying they approve, as the Russians put it, of President Trump extending the ceasefire with Iran, at the same time warning that it would have devastating consequences globally.
If this went back to a shooting war.
But the thing that's actually playing the biggest here in Russian media and in Russia in general is the fact that Vladimir Putin has offered up a ceasefire for a single day on Victory Day, which of course is May 9th.
However, that's also something that's pretty important to the Russians as well, as they've already had to scale back their Victory Day military parade in the face of a Ukrainian drone campaign that's been hitting a lot of infrastructure here in Russia.
And the Russians are clearly saying they're having a lot of trouble.
Enforcing and securing that victory day parade.
So, offering that ceasefire certainly something that could be a backdoor out of that for them.
The same time, the Russians are continuing to say, Anderson, that they want to continue the war in Ukraine.
Of course, what they call their special military operation until all of its goals are achieved.
This is something that brings stain and dishonor on the department, on its leadership, on the line prosecutors and their supervisory officials.
This case has zero merit.
It's contrary to applicable law.
It's contrary to department policy, which governs all prosecutors across this country and every U.S. attorney's office.
No prosecutor is allowed to bring a case unless they believe the admissible evidence is sufficient to probably result in a conviction and to sustain that on appeal.
And although there could be some additional evidence out there that they didn't include the indictment, it seems improbable.
And on its face, I think, as has been said just a moment ago, I think.
The case for a vindictive prosecution motion, which almost never succeeds, has a really strong chance of prevailing here.
And if this case were to get to trial, it's likely almost certainly to result in an acquittal or at least a hung jury.
We are absolutely packed today after a historic announcement yesterday by the Supreme Court ruling on really an earth shattering decision, 6 3, so it wasn't even close.
The task before us now, folks, as you know, we've been the cutting edge for this redistricting war for now going on four years, five years.
Caroline Wren's going to join us because, once again, we're going to need the war in posse to.
Make sure these states are.
This is not, you cannot wait to 2028.
The Supreme Court ruled.
You got to implement special sessions, redrawn maps.
People got to be on the balls of their feet.
Some already are, but we also have to take the maximalist approach.
As we keep saying, you have to be maximalist because the demons trying to destroy this country always take a maximalist approach.
So, Ren's going to be on hopefully next block or the block after to go through the map and what we must do.
As the war in posse to make sure that we can execute on this, I think there are 12 to 19 seats that are potentially available.
Um, and we need them all, we want them all because the constitution says we should have them all.
Uh, also, I guess the king is coming back and he's gonna have a farewell today from the White House.
We'll cover that.
Uh, Pete Hexer goes up for round two on the um at uh, this time in front of the Senate.
I've asked Jim Rickards to join us.
Jim, first off, I have you on here.
I got, I want to talk some economics first.
And Bowling's going to be on talk about oil a little later.
The current chairman of the Federal Reserve announcing in pretty bold terms that he's sticking around as governor until a time of his choosing.
What do you think about that, and how is that going to impact Kevin Walsh and trying to implement what Kevin Walsh wants to do as chairman of the Federal Reserve, sir?
Well, I'll get to all that quickly, Steve, but the short answer is he's just poking a stick in Trump's eye, which is, you know, he's a Bushy.
I mean, he's qualified and all that.
He's not an economist, he's a lawyer, but he's really in the Bush wing, what's left of it, of the Republican Party.
It's not unprecedented.
Mariner Eccles, his term as chair was over in 1949, but he remained on the board as a governor until 1951.
So it has happened before, but it was 75 years ago.
A lot of people don't know.
You get a four year term as chair.
But you get a 14 year term as governor, two different offices.
Powell's term as governor does not expire until 2028, election year, but he's going to hang around as long as he wants.
He says, handing the criminal investigation off in the United States Attorney Jeanine Pirro over to the Inspector General doesn't satisfy his well and truly close or his words requirement because the Inspector General could make another criminal referral and start the whole thing over again.
So he's not leaving.
But that's the kind of legalities of it.
But what's really going on?
First of all, it's a twofer because Powell gets to stick around, but Steve Moran has to go off the board.
And Moran is, first of all, Trump's appointee.
Secondly, the only guy who's been voting for interest rate cuts as opposed to interest rate increases or staying the same.
So there are seven members of the Board of Governors.
There are eight people in line right now, including Powell, because they thought he was leaving.
So Moran has to go.
So he's off.
So Trump loses a vote.
Powell gets a vote or keeps a vote.
He said, I intend to be very low key because we have a new chairman, Kevin Warsh, and all that.
That's fine.
That's happy talk.
But how can the former two term chairman be low key?
Jim, Steve Marin is the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors for President Trump and doing a great job.
You're losing him.
Powell takes the governorship.
I'm hearing from sources over there that Powell's talking about he controls a majority of the governors.
Now, I realize the chairman has superpowers over there, but how big a deal is that going to be when too late Powell has many of these governors in his pocket and try to have open discussions?
Yeah, and don't, I know you're not, but don't sell Powell's shirt.
But what happened yesterday was even deeper than that.
I mean, they kept interest rates unchanged.
The interest rate news was completely boring, completely expected.
That wasn't the point.
In addition to Powell saying, I'm going to stick around, the vote to do nothing, basically leave rates unchanged, was eight to four.
You never see four descents.
That's extremely rare.
Now, one of them was Marin, who wants to cut rates, but he's been doing that for a while.
So, okay.
But the other three, Were interesting.
They were all regional reserve bank presidents, not members of the board of governors.
But remember, these rates are set not by the board of governors, but by something called the Federal Open Market Committee, FOMC, which actually has 12 members.
It's seven governors and five regional reserve bank presidents.
Three of the five voted to dissent from the decision.
And the reason they gave, they didn't want to raise rates yet, but they said, we don't like the easing bias in the statement.
They were wordsmithing.
But that's another way of saying, at best, you're going to keep it the way they are.
Maybe we want to raise rates.
Now, here's the point a couple of dissents, not that rare, a couple of dissenting governors, it happens.
But three out of five regional reserve bank presidents dissenting for that reason shows that this was orchestrated by Powell.
I have no doubt about it.
So Powell said, okay, we want to send a signal, a powerful signal, because three votes is very powerful.
But we don't want to make people crazy.
But we're sending a signal to Warsh.
Warsh is coming in as a dove.
A guy who would probably cut rates in June.
That's what Trump wants.
It doesn't mean he automatically gets it, but that's where Warsh was coming from.
I would take the June rate cut off the table.
I would say Warsh can't do it.
And the reason is you don't want to start your term as chair, four-year term as chair, with a divided, dissenting board.
And that's what he's going to get.
So Powell is still controlling the board behind the scenes, even the Regional Reserve Bank presidents behind the scenes.
That's why he got three dissents.
That's almost unheard of.
And the message to Warsh is hey, don't even think about raising rates in June.
Now, beyond that, I get to August.
You know, we'll see what happens, but uh, so they probably took the June rate cut off the table, they tied Warsha's hands, and Powell's still in control.
Wow, uh, hang on for one second, we're talking about uh, employment number, also strategy.
There's going to be a briefing today.
President Trump's been leaked to Axios, which is the newswire for the West Wing, about a major presentation, strategic discussion today at the White House.
Steve, what's happened is Wall Street and the Financial Times have caught up to what you and I talked about like six weeks ago, which is this is a game of chicken between Iran and the United States.
So Iran has closed the Strait of Hormuz at the Strait itself, and the United States Navy has closed the traffic coming out of the Persian Gulf.
Output transcript Out of distance out in the Arabian Sea.
So, with Iran, how do you get through?
Well, you have to be a friend of Iran.
You're taking oil to China, for example, pay the toll, get permission, et cetera, and you can go through.
If you do that, if you get that far, you pretty quickly encounter the U.S. Navy and they either board you or turn you around or blow a hole in your hull.
So, if you say, who's a friend of both, who can get through Iran and get through the U.S. Navy?
The answer is nobody.
You're an enemy of one or the other.
So, nothing's getting a couple of vessels here and there, but I mean, it's minor.
Normally, it's 120 a day.
If you tell me one or two got through, Fine, but that's trivial.
So it's a game of chicken.
So, what are both sides thinking?
That's the key thing.
The United States is saying, okay, Iran, you're starved of money.
Your currency is collapsing.
You're going to have popular unrest.
You can't bear this much longer.
You're going to have to come to the table and agree to our terms in order to get the oil flowing, et cetera.
And by the way, China is going to suffer from this and they're going to put pressure on you.
Okay.
What is Iran thinking?
Iran is thinking, hey, Americans are spoiled.
$6 gasoline probably already.
Six dollars in California, maybe seven, but the rest of the country is catching up fast.
Six dollar gasoline, economic recession, inflation, higher interest rates, et cetera.
Not to mention the world, the world meaning South Korea, Japan.
New Zealand is a good example, a developed economy.
They have zero energy.
It's 100% imports, whether it's natural gas or oil.
So they're going to have to turn out the lights.
So the question who wins that game of chicken?
It's pretty clear that Iran has the upper hand there.
I have very little doubt about it.
I think they're right.
They have a better read on Americans than we do on Iranians.
And they're also, the midterms are coming up.
Do you want an economic slowdown, higher unemployment, higher interest rates, and $7 gasoline ahead of the midterms?
I don't think so.
And so Iran's probably going to win that bet.
So then back over to Trump, and to your point about this meeting today, what's the United States going to do?
Well, according to Axios, and I assume their sources are good, they're going to talk about what they call a short but intense bombing campaign, another bombing campaign.
Bridges, infrastructure, et cetera, whatever they can find, or the missile launchers and so forth.
Probably not going to touch the desalination plants because it would be easy for Iran to disable Saudi Arabia's desalination plant.
Then you got a kingdom that's dying of thirst.
But to boil it all down, Steve, what this amounts to in terms of Trump's decision making is escalation.
And I said, we talked again, this is stuff we talked about a month ago.
Trump's not going to declare victory and go home.
He could, but that would be widely interpreted as a defeat.
And I think that's the right interpretation.
The stalemate can't last for the reasons I just mentioned.
Somebody's going to blink, and the U.S. might blink first and start the bombing, but now it's Vietnam.
Well, I think they're looking at midterm elections.
They got good advisors, they're pretty smart.
They're looking at midterm elections.
They understand American consumers maybe better than the White House.
Yeah, the people follow the war on the news a little bit, but they get to the guest pump every day or every other day, and they know $6 when they see it.
And that has a big impact.
And demand for gasoline is what economists call inelastic.
It means you got to buy it at any price.
So you got to take the kids to school, go to work, do your job or whatever.
And so you have to buy that gasoline.
There's no avoiding it.
Now, all the happy talk about inflation under control, I mean, it's nonsense.
Americans see it front and center.
So I think those are the pressure points.
And we haven't spent that much time on the rest of the world.
There's no urea, there's no nitrates for the fertilizer.
I mean, you talk about.
Are billion people going to starve?
Well, that's what happens if you don't get fertilizer to developing economies in South Asia in the planting season, et cetera.
Helium, a little esoteric, you can't make semiconductors without helium.
You need a helium enclosed environment that's ultra pure so you can do the kind of etching on the machines that create the chips.
So now we've had some supplies, they're drawing down supplies.
There was some stuff in transit.
We've made it this far, but we're just about at the end of our rope on all these critical materials.
If given that many of these alternatives have a kinetic part to it, and President Trump clearly likes the blockade, does not want to go kinetic again, if the Chinese, if he can't get the Chinese to the table to stop in the overland routes, by the way, there's a map up today of three or four overland routes through our great ally Pakistan into Iran to rearm them from China.
If he can't do that, how boxed in is he?
With these other kinetic activities, because President Trump clearly does not want to go back to military action, only if he's forced to, sir.
Well, I agree that he doesn't want to, but my point is probably Lyndon Johnson didn't want to either, but at some point you have no choice unless you want to just, you know, say declare victory and go home, but that won't wear well with the Republicans and, you know, and voters.
Well, you can't declare victory because you made such a big deal about the nuclear.
Thought it's got to be gone.
They've said, hey, we don't want to negotiate the nuclear until later, and you can't go with the Strait of Hormuz controlled by these pirates down off of Hormuz.
You got two issues you have to solve for before you can declare victory and go home, correct?
I think part of what they're going to talk about in this meeting in the national security meeting, military meeting today, is basically special operations, which would be huge to get Iran's enriched uranium, the 60% enriched uranium.
It's It's buried, it's secured, it's surrounded.
So now I'm not saying the United States couldn't do it.
What I'm saying is, in order to do it, you're going to have to set up a perimeter, which is going to be a lot of boots on the ground, a lot of air cover, fighting around it and fighting through it to get to the uranium.
We've got a landing page, rickardswarroom.com, people can go to.
Give me a minute on strategic intelligence.
Why is our audience that loves this, loves capital markets, loves the discussion on geopolitics, or as the Financial Times now calls it, the essence, geoeconomic agenda?
Right?
They love all that.
Why should they go to and become a member of Strategic Intelligence, sir?
No, it's what chairman and CEOs, what we call the C suite, reads throughout the world.
RickardsWarroom.com.
You actually throw in a book, MoneyGPT.
It's got a chapter, I think it's chapter four, about artificial intelligence and nuclear weapons.
That one will keep you up at night, I guarantee you.
Jim throws that in for free.
Predictive analytics.
Jim Rickards, thank you so much for taking time.
I know you're super busy.
Thanks for joining us this morning.
Appreciate you.
So, President Trump's got some tough decisions on this conflict, obviously.
You saw Pete yesterday.
I didn't think it illuminated anything with the Democrats, which is just constant assault and trying to tear Pete apart.
We're going to cover as much of the Senate as we can in the second hour.
We're going to go in for where they try to get Pete with the kill shots.
So, You can see Pete fighting back, but this today should be very contentious in front of the Senate as he talks about the strategy, the war, the cost of the war, also the defense budget, $1.5 trillion.
We'll get to all that.
The king and the queen consort are departing.
I guess the White House, they're back for a.
They went to New York yesterday.
They're back for a final quick visit with the president.
We're going to cover that from the South Lawn.
Our own Neil McKay will be there, so we'll get back to that also.
Want to.
Chapters, chapter, singular.
We've gotten tremendous feedback from the world and policy on this from people who are trying it.
Medicare is enormously complicated.
Why?
They want it to be enormously complicated.
They don't want you to really understand these various different alternatives you have to the Medicare program.
Why is that?
I don't know.
Something about $100 billion in fees annually being out there for the insurance companies to sweep to themselves.
So, most, if not all, of the advisors you talk to are an employee.
Of the insurance companies.
Chapter didn't start as a healthcare company.
It's a data company.
It's been, the founders of it are people that have been data scientists and worked at data companies.
What they do is look at the data of all the different permutations of Medicare.
845 War Room.
It's a free consultation.
This is no obligation, totally free consultation to talk about your Medicare plan.
845 War Room.
Go check it out today, Chapter.
You will not be, You will be very glad you did.
We're hearing the average savings, I think, of the war impasse is like $1,100, $1,200.
Well, you know, they've talked about affordability, affordability, affordability.
If you have growth, if you have wage growth, and you have dropping unemployment, and you have a smaller number of folks out of the workforce, that can get past some affordability issues because a lot of affordability is going to be structural, folks.
All the inflation from the Biden years, you're not going to whittle that away.
Because the great minds over at the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, the editorial pages are telling us, oh, and the anti Trump crowd on Wall Street is saying, oh, we're in an era now of stagflation, right?
Which we were in under Biden, but we're in an era of stagflation.
What is Santelli telling us about these first quarter numbers, sir?
Well, Santelli is very good at reporting what just happened.
There's so much undercurrent in what happened today.
It gets a little wonky, but work with me here because this is going to affect every single war room viewer, every single American's wallet and budget.
Okay, so the inflation number has been a little bit elevated, it hasn't been bad, but the real number, you pointed it out, Steve, you nailed it growth.
Growth is the only thing that saves everything.
So if you have high inflation, if you have growth, it bails you out.
If you have high unemployment, you get growth.
It bails out high unemployment.
What we got was a 2% GDP number, which is amazingly resilient.
I'll tell you why 2%, man, Trump has headed it for target is 3%.
2% is damn good given the oil price shock that we're going through right now.
70% of the GDP number is consumer spending.
Santelli alluded to the consumer spending ticking up above expectations.
It's got to be stronger than that, even because 70% of the GDP number is the spending and the spending.
Is what matters, which drives the economy.
70% of our economy is consumer spending based.
So GDP at 2% is wonderful, especially when you consider the United Kingdom this morning, late their afternoon, this morning came out with a flat growth, zero growth, almost zero growth in GDP and high inflation.
They are experiencing stagflation.
We're not.
They are.
They have their countries mixed, I think.
And that may be a reflection of the realization that Europe and Asia are at the mercy of the Strait of Hormuz and Iranians right now.
And we frankly aren't.
We're actually shipping more oil out of this country than we ever have.
Last week was the highest export of oil, of petroleum products in the history of keeping records.
So, a lot of good things, even though it may sound bad right now, but a lot of good things happening in the economy.
It's being very resilient, to say the least, Steve.
When Trump said this is going to extend, we've been talking about this for a while.
The traders I talked to are very nervous about.
Upside.
So producers like a higher price, so they'll talk it up.
But refiners need the lowest price possible.
That's an input that feedstock into the refinery is crude oil.
So they want lower.
Those people are very afraid of higher prices.
What we saw overnight was a continuation.
Brent hit $126 a barrel.
That's the highest it's been in five years.
WTI, West Texas Intermediate, hit $114 a barrel, the highest it's been.
It started to ease this morning.
This is why this is really important what people are looking at.
It started to ease, went from $114.
All the way down to it was actually three dollars lower on the day this morning, so um, I don't know, 107 or so.
And there was a rumor that the Iranians hit with some sort of attack, hit the Abraham Lincoln.
Um, it was only a rumor, it was short lived, but oil went from down three dollars to up a dollar, which is doesn't sound like a lot, but a four dollar oil, four percent movement in crude oil is a massive amount of money to the folks who are who are involved in it.
And in bottom line, in our Gasoline stations will be as well.
So it's a very jittery market.
They're on edge for everything that comes out, whether it's a truth social post or a rumor that Iranians hit or fight back.
It's a very jittery market, but the trend still is solidly up, unfortunately.
I think they're what we expect of religious fanaticism, where martyrdom is in their charter.
It's in their DNA, it's in their blood, it's the way they're raised.
They'll fight to the death, and even though they may even be close to economically at death's door, they'll continue to bury the citizenship because they believe that Allah is.
Told them to take down the evil forces, the evil forces being the United States and anyone in the West and Israel.
So they'll continue to fight until, again, I just think that until and when the economy gets so trashed that basic services inside Iran are, you know, water, electricity are being deprived of the citizens, until 91 million people stand up and risk death, that's when the regime changes.
And that's probably when everything, we've seen the all clear, including the Strait of Hormuz.
Admiral Cooper and General Kane today with the president.
Looks like the president's looking for a new range of alternatives of action.
Monumental day yesterday.
Caroline Wren.
This is what kills me about the Republican Party.
Yesterday was a monumental decision.
We've known that's been in the works.
In fact, people have been saying articles are out of how the liberal judges were slow walking it to make sure that we got through the primary season.
So the impact of the unconstitutionality of these DEI gerrymandered districts wouldn't have impact now.
So when it's announced, instead of everybody being ready to springboard like Governor DeSantis, you've got Half of them in the mumble tank, and the other half are trying to pull stuff together.
Walk me through where we stand right now on this, ma'am.
Anyone who watched the oral arguments about VRA knew that this ruling was coming, and there was only one date left between now and the election that the Supreme Court could have come out with this decision.
We all knew it was coming.
We talked about it for the last few months on your show, but many of these states seem very unprepared and are not moving as quickly as I would like to see.
So, I mean, right now, looking at the map of states in the South, That this ruling affects that have not had their primaries yet, we could pick up as many as 13 seats this November.
Just look at so coming up, you've got Louisiana, that primary is May 16th.
Landry just did the right thing.
He came out and said, We're going to delay our primary via special session and we are going to redraw these maps.
And I'll go into this in a second.
Then next, you have Alabama, May 19th, Georgia, May 19th, South Carolina, June 9th, Missouri, August 4th, Tennessee, August 6th.
We could pick up again 13 seats of all these governors.
And I'm not seeing the movement right now from any of them.
In fact, you know, with South Carolina, in fact, I mean, Henry Matzer, like, come out right now.
And if you're saying that I heard them say, oh, we may not have time, do what Landry just did.
Delay the primary, move it to August.
This is more important than your set primary date.
And so Georgia is a little bit trickier.
They've already started early voting.
So I'm curious to see what, you know, Brian Kemp is going to do there.
Missouri, Governor Mike Kehoe, you need to be all over this.
You know, Bill Lee in Tennessee, where are you?
Why haven't you spoken out about this?
Why haven't you called a special session?
We have.
To put pressure on these guys.
And then, even with Jeff Landry, I mean, with Louisiana, I'm so glad he did this, but I'm hearing that they may redraw for a 5 1 map.
Do not do that.
It should be a 6 0 map.
As Hakeem Jeffries said, it is time for maximum warfare when it comes to redistricting.
We want a 6 0 map.
Anything less than that is capitulating to the left because states in the South should show the same respect to its congressional maps as states in the Northeast have for decades.
For over 60 years, the South has been shackled by VRA.
That is no longer the case.
So, when you go to redraw your map that you were shackled by, you don't have to.
You can also do what they've done in the Northeast, which is have zero GOP districts.
Look at Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut.
I'm calling on you to show the same respect that those states have shown our party, which is zero.
Plus, we're going to juggle the White House with the King leaving, and Pete Hegseth is going to have testimony up in 11 o'clock hour in front of the Senate.
So that'll light him up.
So we're going to be there and see what Pete's got to say in support of Pete Hegseth.
John Henry Weston joins us from LifeSight News.
Sir, an article in the New York Post today, I don't have time to go into with you because we need to spend more time on that, John Henry.
I'll get you back.
But it's about now more revelations of the Biden administration coming after and targeting traditional Catholics, which is outrageous.
And someone's got to be held accountable for that.
Talk to me about there's an outrageous story, and I know you only got a few minutes for us today, but it goes to you know, the FBI started investigating traditional Latin mass Catholics.
My parents started this, we're among the original people, start this small parish in, um, in Richmond, Virginia, which the FBI office focused on because it says it breeds extremism and white nationalism, all these lies.
These people are the salt of the earth.
There are these families, working class families, five, six, seven, eight, nine kids, a couple of them always in the military.
I mean, it is the salt of the earth.
The kids come, they know how to serve in the Latin Mass, they know how to participate in the Latin Mass.
The little girls are always coming in, appropriately dressed, heads covered.
It's very touching.
What happened in Charlotte?
You had one of these families, and this demon bishop would not give them Holy Communion because they kneeled at the traditional altar rail, sir?
And like I was saying, just with the Biden DOJ story, what we're finding out now the number one enemy of traditional Catholics is going to be your left wing Catholic.
And right from Pope Francis, we got the order to try and shut down basically the traditional Latin Mass everywhere.
Most bishops played along, some tried to leave it as much as they could.
Certain bishops, like the one in North Carolina, Bishop Michael Martin, is hardcore left and he wants to eliminate the Latin Mass, did so, puts it in one parish far away from everybody.
But then he actually went further because he's so into it.
He tried to eliminate all reverence in the regular Mass, the Novus Ordo Mass.
And in doing so, he said, You can't use those altar rails, those beautiful rails at which people kneel to receive Holy Communion, to receive our Lord, body, blood, soul, and divinity in Holy Communion.
So it's a devout practice of all those faithful Catholics you mentioned who have six, seven, eight, nine kids.
Their kids serve as priests and in the military.
They have beautiful marriages.
And so one of the families, Bishop Martin attends this one church, it's a very Orthodox church, and he attends and he's sitting there.
And the family kneels at the altar rail right in front of it.
I think this was like the first Sunday that they weren't allowed to kneel at the altar rail.
And so there's Martin sitting there and beautiful little family, young kids, one of the babies being held up to the altar rail.
They're just kneeling there to receive, not allowed.
And the priests say they didn't see him, whatever, but the bishop sure did.
He was sitting there in front of them.
And it's so sad to see, by the way, it violates church teaching, even recent church teaching, because in 2004, you have a John Paul II document.
That says that the faithful are able to receive Holy Communion kneeling and on the tongue.
But hang on, particularly for our non Catholic and evangelical viewers and listeners, this was to humiliate these people.
They came up in the most sacred time, and you could tell they're just gentle, good people.
They had their children there.
The little girls were so appropriately attired.
It's quite touching.
They kneeled to receive Holy Communion like you're supposed to.
And a bishop went out of his way to humiliate them and not serve them communion.
And then finally they got up and left.
There has to be, there has to be, he has to be held accountable.
We need to push back on these people because they're demonic.
Anybody that would try to humiliate parents in front of their children when they're having their children do the right thing is, it's just, it's, it's got to stop.
And this happens all the time.
But they went to humiliate them in front of their parish, humiliate them in front of their peers, and to humiliate their children.
At the same time, breaking basic doctrine that if you're there and you kneel, you need to be served Holy Communion.
And the issue is this is characteristic of so many in the hierarchy who really don't like the traditional practices of the past.
They wanted to make, and it's likely the boomer generation, if you will, of priests and bishops.
They wanted to make their stamp on the church by being this modern way of doing things.
Let's get rid of the things of the past.
These things of the past, by the way, they've been going on since the time of Jesus himself.
But the boomer generation of priests and bishops, they didn't have anything to offer other than that.
So they thought, oh, this is going to be our signature.
This is going to be what puts us down in history.
We ended the sort of what they would consider pious practices of the past, which are just terrible.
And we wanted to make it a new modern stand and receive in our hands.
You know what?
Just allow the faithful their right.
But they won't do that because for them, this is a personal thing.
And you can see in that leaked document from Bishop Martin where he wants to go.
It means so much to him to eliminate these pious practices of the past because they actually want to change the church and make it in their own image.
And that's the real crime.
To shame the faithful, as so many priests have done, you're not allowed to kneel.
I can't give you a holy communion for kneeling.
Stand up.
Or, no, I'm not going to give it to you on your tongue.
Stick out your hands.
For so many of the faithful, that is so harmful because how can I touch our Lord with my hand when I watched a priest put a veil on his hands to hold up the sacrament in the monstrance?
It makes no sense.
To watch this go on, listen, Just a couple of weeks ago, a priest gave testimony of Mother Teresa telling him that the worst thing in the world is to receive Holy Communion in the hand rather than on the tongue.
And this is where it's at.
The faithful want to do receive our Lord the most reverent way.
The bishop is saying, I prefer you do it my way.
Don't use the altar rail.
And by the way, even from a leftist perspective, not allowed to use the altar rail?
Appreciate you changing your schedule around and come on and be with us this morning, John Henry.
Be back at you.
John Henry Weston, a bishop there to humiliate working class, the simple working class people that are the backbone of this country and, quite frankly, the backbone of the Catholic Church.
Revolting.
Michael Martin in North Carolina, big shot.
We're going to take a short break.
Caroline Wren, we got to go to the ramparts today.