Greg Willard on SCOTUS Tariffs, Matt Poppleton on the St. Croix River

Westwood One presents America at Night. Here's your host, McGraw-Millhaven. All right, we are back in the hot seat. Thanks for letting me take a couple of days off. Thanks to everybody who helped fill in. And let's move on. Coming up in hour number three, of course, we've got open phones. We'll take some phone calls far and wide. I want to hear people from Providence check in in Long Island. Holy mackerel, that northeast in New England, they got hit hard with some serious snow. So we'll check in with some of them coming up a little bit later on in hour number three. In hour number two, we are going to take a ride down the Wild Rivers Conservatory, the St. Croix River, I should say. It's on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota. It's a national park. It's part of our 250th anniversary of the great country. We're going to check in with the St. Croix National Park. That's an hour number two. This first hour, though, because we were off last week, we weren't allowed to debut what I think is considered the best legal analyst in the country. I've seen legal analysts on all the TV shows, all the radio shows. I think my guy is the best, not just because he's my guy, but because he is the best. He is a former White House staff assistant lawyer for the Ford administration and a St. Louis University law professor and one heck of a nice gentleman. Greg Willard, welcome to America at Night. Well, McGraw, great to be with you. And with that introduction, I think I'm just going to sit back and you can keep talking like that for the hour. Good to be with you. I butchered your Ford administration. You were a staff attorney. Is that what you were with the Ford administration? Staff assistant to the president and then went on to be his personal attorney in the decades after that, McGraw. Okay, good. So you have certainly the chops, and you explain it in a way that people can understand. Let's go back to this Supreme Court decision where they ruled 6-3 that President Trump did not have the right to unilaterally put tariffs on. It seems like with the decision that even though it was 6-3, it seems like nobody agreed with anybody else. Even though Gorsuch agreed, he wrote a 46-page concurrent. Amy Coney Barrett wrote four different pages. Kagan wrote seven different pages. Clarence Thomas wrote 18 pages. And even though he agreed with Kavanaugh, Kavanaugh wrote 63 pages. So it seemed like even though it was a six to three decision, the decision was all over the place. Explain this to us. Well, let me let me try to set the stage quickly. This arises under a federal statute that has a pithy title, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. And our listeners will hear it referred to as IEPA. And the 170 pages that you reference, McGraw, they all emanated out of a dispute over IEPA. Secondly, it's always bad form to contradict the host, so bear with me while I contradict the host. Yes. A dirty, dark secret about this tariff decision is on a fundamental point, the decision was nine to zero. Let me say that again. On a fundamental point, all nine justices agreed, period. Then it began to split out. There was six to three, and we can talk about that. And then within the six and within the three, there were differences in reasoning. Let me touch on the nine to zero. Under our Constitution, as we all learned in eighth grade civics class, we have three branches of government, the Congress, the president, and the judiciary. In Article I, the Congress was given a whole batch of powers. Article 2, the president is given a batch of powers, but not nearly as robust as the Congress. And then in Article 3, the judiciary has even a smaller toolkit. it nine justices all nine agree under article two of the constitution the president of the united states does not have a scintilla of a power to levy tariffs none every justice last week agreed with that proposition that under Article 2 of the Constitution, the president does not have the power to levy tariffs. We then turn over to Article 1, and guess what, McGraw? Article 1, Section 8, which lays out the powers of the Congress, guess what the first one is? The power to levy taxes and tariffs. Right. Right there. What happened then was in 1977 with IEPA, Congress, as it has done since certainly since World War II, Congress gave certain emergency powers under IEPA to the Congress. Said another way, Congress delegated to the president under IEPA certain of Congress's powers. President Trump last year read IEPA to empower him to levy tariffs in any amount on any country for any length of time. And that's how he and his administration understood the grant of these emergency powers to the presidents under IEPA. Obviously, people disagreed with that. And I'll just stop right there. But that's how we got to where we were Thursday night before this decision came down. That's how we got there. But again, just to make the point clear, we're not talking about the Supreme Court saying, oh, Mr. President, as president, you don't have this power. And somehow that's controversial. Well, it's not controversial. Nine to zero, a president does not have plenary power to levy tariffs. The question is, under IEPA, did Congress give the presidents, plural, their tariff power to the extent that President Trump sought to deploy it over the last roughly 12 months, McGraw? Hold that thought, Greg Willard. I want to take a break. I want to have plenty of time to get to segment two and segment three. Greg Rullard with us, legal analyst, St. Louis University Law School professor, and the best at the business at explaining it to you and me. Stay right there. America at Night, back in a moment. America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven, where the nation comes to talk. This is America at Night with McGraw-Millhaven. Greg Willard is our guest, St. Louis University Law School professor who's great at breaking down Supreme Court decisions. And you're going to hear a lot of him as we get closer to June and July when the announcements and the regular court releases all of their decisions. but he's nice enough to join us on a late February evening to explain this tariff decision. Okay, Greg Willard, it came down to 6-3 that President Trump did not have the emergency powers to levy the tariffs. And it seems like it split the conservative court. So why did the three conservatives say he did, and why did the three conservatives say he didn't? It stems from the point we just made in the earlier segment, McGraw, and that is that we are dealing with whether the president under IEPA was granted by Congress, Congress's power to levy tariffs. Three of the justices, in the opinion of Chief Justice Roberts, said that when we're dealing with what is referred to as a major question, a major transfer of a fundamental congressional power, that Congress has to speak specifically and explicitly in giving the presidents that broad of power. The three justices, including Chief Justice Roberts, said that IEPA did not do that. And in particular, they pointed to the fact that IEPA used lots and lots of verbs and lots and lots of actions that a president could take. And guess what, McGraw? The word tariff is not in the statute that was relied upon. So that's what the three sort of at the core of their opinion. The additional three, which makes up the six ruling against President Trump, they said we don't have to apply the major questions doctrine to interpret this statute because for the reason I just said, McGraw, there is nothing in this statute that grants the power of levying tariffs that gives that to the president. He can regulate imports and lots of different ways that he can regulate imports, those three said. But the word tariff is not in the statute. Therefore, those three said he doesn't have that power. They they both groups, if you will, McGraw agreed that the president did not have the power. It's simply a question of the constitutional framework that the six of them decided that they needed to use to reach their decision. Three employed the major questions doctrine and said Congress did not speak clearly enough. And three said it's not in the statute at all. Let me be quick to add this, because there may be a lot of our listeners tonight who are upset that maybe President Trump was being picked on and that somehow this was a unicorn. I would simply point out to them that the major questions doctrine in pushing back on presidents is not a unicorn in terms of this decision. Some of our listeners will remember that President Biden purported to use a statute passed around the time of 9-11 to cancel $450 billion with a B in student loans. And the United States Supreme Court said, Mr. President, you don't have that power. Congress did not give it to you because on something that major, nearly a half a trillion dollars, we expect Congress to speak more clearly. Similarly, President Biden and his administration issued an executive order mandating vaccines for employees in a workplace that had more than 100 employees. And the United States Supreme Court, applying the major questions doctrine, pushed back and said, no, Mr. President, you don't have that power. So the point I want to make, McGraw, is that it's not that suddenly this idea of insisting that Congress speak clearly on these major questions is a one-off. It has been applied to push back on presidents, both Democrats and Republicans. And finally, the three in dissent, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Kavanaugh, they read the statute and they interpreted the statute to say, well, the word tariff isn't in there. But when you look at all of the language and the context, and especially since we're dealing with foreign affairs, we think that we can infer that the word tariff and the grant of a tariff power is in there. And therefore, we think President Trump's emergency tariffs under IEPA were authorized and granted to him by the Congress under IEPA. And therefore, we three dissenters disagree with the six. And we think President Trump should be allowed to go forward with these tariffs. The upshot is he will not be allowed to go forward with these tariffs under IEPA. As we heard over the weekend, the weekend passed, he's attempting to sort of fill in the gaps with other statutes and tariff authorities. But as far as his ability to continue this tariff regime under IEPA, it is graveyard debt. Yeah, very similar to the way Biden tried to use other statutes to sort of forgive student loan debt after the Supreme Court shut him down. I've got about three minutes here, and then I take another break, Greg Willard. For a contextualist and an originalist, Thomas Alito and Kavanaugh sure did twist themselves to be a contortionist to somehow find a right in that statute to give it to him that he could levy tariffs, because they're originalists. So I would think if it's not in the text, it's not in the text. What happened? Well, you would be very welcome in the chambers of Justice Neil Gorsuch, because among other points that he made in his, I think, 46-page concurring opinion, he pointed out just that. And he sort of threw it right back at those three justices and how they have very strictly interpreted statutory language in the school of Justice Scalia. And Justice Gorsett said, look, the word tariff is not in this IEPA. It's not there. And the three dissenters did not disagree with that. What they said instead was that, as I said a moment ago, that, well, tariffs can be inferred in the context of this statute. And Justice Kavanaugh made a big point that since we're talking about foreign affairs and foreign policy, that the scale ought to be tipped in favor of deeming Congress to have given a grant to the president. But you make a good point, and Justice Gorsuch would concur loudly with you this evening, that in terms of a strict textualist approach, a lot, if not most of our listeners, would have a hard time getting there if they just read the words of the IEPA statute, McGraw. With that being said, the three liberal justices who gave Biden the pass on the student loan were quick to then not give Trump the pass on the tariffs. So, right, they're as dirty as the other side. Well, there was more than a little bit of figuratively McGraw that your daughter Emerson on the playground may observe from time to time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. back and forth over that very point. Hold that thought, Greg Willard, legal analyst, also a St. Louis University Law School professor, great at breaking down all this stuff. What is this major questions doctrine, and what's ahead for the Supreme Court? Stay right there. More to get to. America at Night, back in a moment. You're listening to America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. The Stacking Benjamins Podcast Thanksgiving, I ask them if I can borrow more. Stealth wealth. Stacking Benjamins. Follow and listen on your favorite platform. This is America at Night with McGraw-Millhaven. Greg Willard is our guest, St. Louis University Law School professor and one heck of a nice man. Greg, where did the justices leave the question of a tariff refund? A lot of words, a lot of pages, not a lot of talk about a refund. 170 pages, and on the answer to the question, who gets the refunds, there is a resounding silence. Cue Simon and Garfunkel, and they're hit, the sounds of silence, because that's what we got. McGraw from the Supreme Court on this now fundamental question, who's going to get the refunds for these hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs that the Supreme Court has ruled the president was not constitutionally empowered to collect? So what does that mean? Did they just leave? I mean, who's I mean, so it was just not I mean, because it was it was brought up in the oral arguments, was it not? Like, what are we going to do? And then ultimately, they just didn't answer the question? They did not. It was brought up, and Justice Barrett probably summed it up well when she said, if we rule against the president, it's going to be a mess. And I think there was consensus in the courtroom, at least, that it will be a mess. I guess let me make a flip comment on a non-flip subject but the flip comment is there will be several thousand lawyers in the United States for the next many years who are going to be praising the heavens, McGraw, that they went to law school because of what's about to ensue with this decision. And the process goes like this. Today, in the port of Los Angeles, California, several container ships, I'm sure, came in, and they unloaded their imports into the United States. The importer, the company who did the importing of that container ship, they file a customs declaration, and the Customs and Border Protection Agency assesses a duty or a tariff, and they make an entry. And that entry is for this container ship and this importer, the entry is they have to pay a tariff or a duty of X. As of December 10th, so not quite, what, three months ago, but as of December 10th, for President Trump's IEPA tariffs, there have been 34 million entries. For 300,000 importers aggregating on the short end about $150 to $190 billion with a B dollars in tariffs that have been collected. Now, let me go sideways quickly. There's a lot of chatter on cable news that, well, how are people who bought a television at Walmart and had to pay extra because of the tariff, how are they going to get their money back? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they're probably not. not, because the only people who have what we lawyers call standing to assert a refund are these 300,000 importers and their 34 million entries, plus the entries that have happened between last December 10th and this past weekend. Only those importers can seek the refunds. As to whether then buyers downstream from those importers, whether they're able to get a piece of whatever refund the importer can get or whether it will trickle all the way down to the ultimate consumer, that will play out. But it will not play out as part of the litigation, if you will, McGraw, over the refunds that the federal government is going to have to pay to significantly all, if not all, of these 300,000 importers and their 34 million entries for the tariffs that they paid. These importers have paid them, McGraw. But the Supreme Court has now ruled that those tariffs were assessed and collected from them with powers that the president did not constitutionally have, and therefore they will be entitled to a refund. All right, a couple quick questions here, and I want to move on to the upcoming court cases. And that is, does this tariff case cover all of the tariff cases going forward? In other words, Donald Trump's threatening, I'm going to use other powers granted to me by Congress to levy tariffs. So this, in a way, this is a narrow decision. Obviously, the depth and breadth of it in this space is enormous. It's unprecedented. But elsewhere, Congress has granted to our presidents very significant tariff authorities in other contexts. The difference, McGraw, is this. Under IEPA, there were no constraints. There were no limits, amounts, temporal or otherwise. What President Trump announced over the weekend, his 15 percent tariff, that is under other statutes where Congress has granted tariff authority to the presidents. But in the one that he's relying on most heavily, there's a 150-day cap. And then I think there's a limit of 15 percent within that 150 days. So, yes, this Supreme Court decision was a body blow to his tariff policy, but that's the bad news for the president. The good news is he does have these other authorities that I don't think anybody really questions, whether they are constitutionally valid, whether he is properly invoking them. I guess other people can sort that out. But that's the good news for the president. The bad news for the president is what I just said. The amount and the time limits that are placed on him by those statutes really kind of put the shackles on what he otherwise would like to do, McGraw. Another phrase you brought up, and a lot of talking heads are talking about this major questions doctrine. Only a lawyer in the Supreme Court can come up with some new phrase, and all of a sudden now it's the law of the land. What the heck is a major questions doctrine? That's not in the Constitution. Again, where are these originalists coming up with this major questions doctrine? What is it, and where did it come from? Well, let's just be blunt. They made it up. But they made it up because they had to decide this question. What powers that the Constitution gives to the Congress, what of those powers can be transferred or assigned to our presidents? And we could spend the rest of the evening going through just dozens and dozens and dozens of statutes where Congress has transferred to presidents portions of Congress's powers under the Constitution. What the Supreme Court has said in recent years is when there is a claim by a president that a major power of the Congress has been assigned to the president. So for example the tariff power an unfettered tariff power the power to cancel nearly a half a trillion dollars in student loans And what the Supreme Court has said is for the two political branches to be doing that kind of give and take and transfer of powers, the transferor, in this case the Congress, has to speak specifically and explicitly that they are transferring this major power to the president. Therefore, it is called a major question. And the question is, did Congress, in fact, specifically and explicitly transfer that power to the president? Unfortunately for President Trump, the answer he got last Friday morning on his IEPA tariffs was a six to three no. But again, just as President Biden got the same news with his student loan cancellation, and his COVID vaccine mandate to businesses with more than 100 employees, McGraw. That's where this major question doctrine of interpretation came up. And we'll see more of it, I think you can rest assured, in the future, McGraw. Coming up, what are the cases that are going to come up in June, in late June that you're looking at? What are some of the big ones? Well, I think the one that's probably going to get the most airtime or a substantial portion of it will be the birthright citizenship. President Trump has issued an executive order declaring that what I think most observers had assumed was the law of the land for well over a century is that under the 14th Amendment, where the Constitution says that if a baby is born in the United States, the understanding of I think most people has been, well, then that baby is born. He is automatically an American citizen. What people overlook, McGraw, is that the 14th Amendment does not say if you're born in this country, you're a citizen. There's an important clause in there, and that's what the fight is all about. And the fight is, it says, it means born in the United States, and the phrase is, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Quick example. If the ambassador to France and her husband, if she delivers a baby in Washington, D.C., well, that baby is born in the United States. That baby is not a citizen of the United States under the 14th Amendment because the baby and her parents are not subject to the jurisdiction thereof, not subject to the jurisdiction. President Trump has taken the position that if a mother is in the United States in violation of the immigration laws, she is not subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Therefore, her child born in the United States is like the child of the French ambassador born in the United States. That baby is not subject to the jurisdiction thereof and therefore is not a United States citizen. The Supreme Court is going to hear oral argument in just a few weeks about that question, and we'll get the answer by the end of June. Oh, I thought they already heard this debate on this one, on the birthright citizenship. No, what they heard, it got to them initially on this question of a nationwide injunction, and they ruled on the nationwide injunction. What I think we're going to hear between now and June will be, I think, a very important question on this notion of presidential power. Not so much whether Congress gave the president the power, but whether a president can fire a governor of the Federal Reserve Board. and whether the president has the power to fire a commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission. President Trump has taken a position that a member of the Federal Reserve Board is part of the executive branch, and he has plenary authority under Article II to fire that person. Same thing with the FTC. Unlike what we were talking about in the earlier segments with these tariffs where 9 to 0, the Supreme Court said, well, Mr. President, you don't have Article 2 power to limit these tariffs. Well, in this case, he's saying, I do have Article 2 power to fire a Fed governor. I do have Article 2 power to fire a commissioner of an independent agency. We're also going to hear the answer on transgender athletes in high school. That's a 14th Amendment question and Title IX. And then I think we'll probably have as much effect as any of these decisions that I just mentioned. And the reason I phrase it that way is I don't mean to make insignificant these other cases, but there's a very important campaign finance case that if it goes a certain way, the remaining vestiges of federal limits on campaign spending are about to be blown up. And if any of our listeners doubts the impact of money and big money on federal campaigns, if this case goes the way that many are hoping that it goes and takes off the remaining shackles, federal shackles on spending. As the saying goes, you ain't seen nothing yet in terms of the magnitude of campaign spending that is going to be foisted on the American people, McGraw. Oh, boy. Well, thanks for that. Thanks for that nice little nugget of cheer as we get ready. A Debbie Downer as we move into the spring. But, yeah, that's – I mean, it's one of those things, McGraw, that with the Supreme Court – and we see this year after year – is a lot of attention – a lot of cases get a lot of attention for a whole host of reasons. But then there are these other cases that just kind of burble along and don't get a whole bunch of attention. But then when they're decided a certain way, it's, wow, break the glass. Yes, we've got a new world order in this case in the world campaign finance, McGraw. Greg Willard, keep your phone on. We will abuse it as needed. St. Louis University Law Professor, also an attorney in the Ford administration. Greg Willard, thanks for staying up late for us tonight. Great to be with you, my friend. Stay safe. Always a pleasure. All right, stay right there. America at Night, back in a moment. America at Night with McGraw-Millhaven. Hey, next hour, we're going to talk about the, it's, well, it's National Park Night, Tuesday night. St. Croix National Scenic Riverway is the national park that is on tap. So stay tuned for that. Also, text messages, phone calls, 1-844-2-Mcgraw. That's 1-844-262-4729. Excuse me. Whoa, that came out of nowhere. 1-844-262-4729. I apologize. 1-844-262-4729. I can sneeze with the best of them. I'll leave you with this. Jim from Oregon. Hey, McGraw, I'm still in the warm afterglow of Olympic hockey. We have a lot of Canadians listening. It was a great game. Two whimsical thoughts. I wish the sports bars in Portland could have been open. That would have been a lot of fun. Yeah. Watching a sports bar at, what, 5 o'clock in the morning in Portland. Stay right there. Our executive director is Alex Hinton. Our engineer tonight is Richard Good. I'm McGraw Millhaven, and this is America at Night on Westwood One. Thank you. Westwood One presents America at Night. Here's your host, McGraw-Millhaven. Happy birthday, America. It's our 250th anniversary, and in honor of that, all year long, we are going to pick national parks on a semi-regular basis and talk to the people who are involved with those parks and tell us about them and find out more because we know the big ones, but we don't know a lot of the smaller ones or the lesser known ones, if you will. Like, let's welcome in Matt Poppleton, executive director of the Wild Rivers Conservatory. Matt, welcome to America at Night. Thank you. Good evening. Nice to meet you. So tell us about the Wild Rivers Conservancy. What is that? Wild Rivers Conservancy is the official nonprofit partner to the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, which is a riverway national park, 255 miles of the St. Croix River and Namakagan River, which flows through northwestern Wisconsin and eastern Minnesota. Is it safe to say one of the lesser known national parks? Yeah, when you think of some of the big name Yosemite, Yellowstone national parks, the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway might not be at the top of that list, But it is a real national treasure that is nationally recognized, locally cherished in the St. Croix River Valley between Minnesota and Wisconsin. So take us through the history of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. How did it become a national park? And give us a little sense of why it's a national park. That's a great question. And it's really got an interesting history that includes our organization. So before we were Wild Rivers Conservancy, we were a group of volunteers in 1911 called the St. Croix River Improvement Association, a group of volunteers that saw something special with the St. Croix River and worked to steward the river, to protect it, water quality, fishing habitat, all of that. And then through the early part of the 20th century, you started seeing more and more dams across the nation, and the St. Croix River was no exception. And so the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act was introduced in 1968, and the St. Croix River Association was a large part of that effort. And the two champions that we had were Senator Mondale from Minnesota and Senator Gaylord Nelson from Wisconsin. And they really worked hard to push that the St. Croix was one of the first wild and scenic rivers designated in 1968. So only eight Rivers at that time. And a wild and scenic river has a federal organization that oversees it. So at the time, the National Park Service was in charge of protecting the St. Croix through that wild and scenic designation. So the National Park, as it stands with the Riverway, has been in existence since 1968. And as a volunteer organization, we sort of paralleled that effort up until 2011, when the St. Croix River Association became the official friends group to the national park. And then 2021, we changed our name to be a little bit more expansive, to be Wild Rivers Conservancy. That includes the St. Croix and the Namakoggan. And the Namakoggan is the main tributary to the St. Croix there. So you mentioned it's on the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota, but how far is it from Minneapolis? Not far. I actually live in St. Paul. So my commute is about 45 minutes to our office that's in Osceola, Wisconsin. So to have this incredible national treasure that's only about 45 minutes to an hour away from a major metropolitan area like the Twin Cities is pretty remarkable. Yeah, no, it's pretty amazing. Okay, so now when you talk about a national park, a lot of people think of it as you certainly want to handle it with gloves, right, and be very, very careful. It's a very expensive piece of jewelry. And yet, so the St. Croix River, are you allowed to kayak on it? Are you allowed to swim in it? Are you allowed to camp on it? I mean, what are you allowed to do, and what are you allowed not to do? Oh, for sure. Well, it has such incredible recreational value. So it is definitely a park to enjoy and participate in. The wild and scenic designations are there to protect that free-flowing condition. So there are future dams, the water quality, the flora and the fauna, as well as the scenic and recreational aspects of it. And I think the best way to enjoy the river is paddling. So be it a canoe or a kayak, it's got this great environment for just sort of paddling through, and you've got these bluffs kind of towering overhead. You've got crystal water below you in order to see the huge variety of fish that we have in the river, the mussel. We can talk more about the native mussels that are in the river, but it has such recreational opportunities. And I'd say paddling and fishing are kind of at the highest top of my list, but there's also great hiking. In the winter, you can snowshoe. You can cross-country ski. There's areas where you can rock climb. So there's really endless opportunities to engage on the land and in the river to experience the park. How long would it take for somebody to kayak the whole 250 miles? That's a great question, and there have been folks who have done it. But I would say, you know, with overnight camping, I would schedule for a couple weeks. Oh, okay, yeah. So, I mean, it's sort of like the Appalachian Trail, right? I mean, this is sort of a thing, right? I'm sure there are people who sort of plan their summer vacation around kayaking down the whole thing. Yeah, and you can do the whole thing in one swoop or you can do sections. I've started wanting to try to piece together different sections that I've done to really get to get to know the river from the very northern part to the very southern tip. Would you would you camp out on the shore and pitch a tent or are there hotels or Airbnbs or how does all that work? Well, you can kind of do a little bit of everything. I think we actually offer a kayak program on the Namakagan that starts in we have one program in May and another in June when the water levels are high. And it's a great three-day paddle. We put in, we paddle about 10 miles to the town of Sealy, which is in Wisconsin. And there's a great lodge that's located just off of the park there. And we pull up our kayaks and we spend the night at Lennrout Lodge. It's fantastic. And there's a nearby restaurant that we have our meal at that evening. It's pretty comfortable. Then you get back into kayaks the next day, paddle another 12 miles into the town of Hayward, and actually Hayward Lake, where it opens up a bit. There's another hotel that we pull our kayaks up to and stay the night in Hayward as well. The third day, it's just another 15-mile paddle on down, and we get picked up by a shuttle service. So that's, you know, kind of on a comfortable end of how you can experience it. But there are over 60 river landings and numerous campsites that you can camp your way through as well, which we have done those programs in the past, and it's a great way to experience the river. What about rapids? Is it all meandering? Are there some rapids? Are there more dangerous spots than others? Yeah, it kind of varies. There's some areas that can get real narrow, and so the water, we call it the chutes that you'll come through. But it's pretty manageable. I would say class one to two rapids, nothing that's too technical. If you happen to take on a little bit of water, the consequences aren't too bad at the end there. So it's fun to introduce people to moving water, have them go through. I did a great paddle this past summer with my wife and daughter, and we're in the canoe navigating some of the rapids, made it through just fine, and had a great kind of half-day paddle there. The St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, one of the national parks, a hidden gem you should know about. We'll come back and talk more with Matt Poppleton, who is the executive director of the nonprofit organization that helps support the national park, the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. America at Night, back in a moment. From the heart of America, this is America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. Coming to you from the heart of the nation, this is America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. All right, we're talking national parks because it's the 250th anniversary of this great country, the national parks, one of our great, great gifts that we have given ourselves. And we each and every week or so we check in with a different national park this week, the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. And Matt Poppleton, executive director of the nonprofit group that supports the park Wild Rivers Conservatory. Matt, how many people visit the park on any given year? Well, the number is actually increasing year over year. So the last estimates were about 900,000, so close to a million people are visiting the Riverway a year, which is pretty astounding. Talk about the fishing, because I know a lot of people, you mentioned the mussels, but talk about some of the fishing, and I'm sure that brings a lot of people to the river each and every year. It does. Actually, the Riverway has 111 species of fish, so really, really diverse waterway for fishing. And so, you know, a lot of folks come for the smallmouth and the walleye. But one kind of iconic fish of the river is the lake sturgeon, which have been described as sort of the living dinosaurs. I don't know if you've ever seen an image of a sturgeon, but they are pretty remarkable. Males can live 15 to 20 years old, females 20 to 25. These fish can get up to seven feet long and close to 200 pounds. and and they are i have seen these things they're pretty gnarly looking uh yes are you telling me they are they are plentiful in the st croix they are yeah i've sat and seen people uh with their vishing setups and and hook into a sturgeon and it's it's pretty remarkable uh so so the st croix is it's it's a fresh fresh water riverway right correct yeah yeah and so the headwaters what are all up in minnesota and wisconsin and sort of just like the mississippi right gathers through all of the all of the the rainfall and and trickles down yeah and actually that's kind of where our mission as well rivers conservancy comes into play so our mission is to inspire stewardship to forever ensure the ecological integrity of the St. Croix and Namakagan rivers. And our vision is a thriving watershed that's forever accessible, scenic, and wild. And so while the National Park manages the riverway, and that's the river itself, and then there's about a quarter mile buffer of land on each side, our work expands upon that and works with the entire watershed. And so that just helps the overall health of the entire watershed system that does extend up into northwest Wisconsin. Talk about the mussels. You didn't talk about the mussels. All the mussels, yeah. So pretty unique. And the St. Croix is almost internationally known for the number of mussel species. We have 41 mussel species that have been identified, and they're a great indicator of water quality. They're a filter for the rivers. And so, you know, the healthier the mussel population, the higher the water quality is. And a really cool project that we did this past summer with the National Park Service was to do an inventory of the mussels that were on the Namakoggin. They've been able to do some studies on the St. Croix, but it had been decades since we had really known kind of what the mussel population was on the Namakoggin. And so the biologists with the Park Service got out and they snorkeled about 100 miles of the Namakagan River over the course of the summer. And so you'd have these folks snorkeling. You'd have interns back behind them in canoes with a laptop taking measurements. And when they would see a muscle bed, they'd raise a hand and we'd mark it on the map. And that was a way to get a sense of the population of the muscles in the Namakagan. and they were thrilled to see that it was a really healthy population and a couple other species identified. And the next step is to come through and snorkel to get down and even closer and evaluate those muscle beds and really get to understand what's happening on the Namakagan. Wow. What are glacial potholes? Glacial potholes. So if you're coming on down the river and you're between Taylor's Falls, which is on the Minnesota side, and St. Croix Falls, I'd say one of the more iconic areas of the river is where it's called the Dales. And that's this basaltic cliff that you come down to. It gets really narrow and you have this basalt outcroppings. And as the glaciers were coming through 10,000 some odd years ago, all this rushing water. And in that basalt, you would get a whirlpool that was going and you'd get a tiny little pebble or a rock that would get caught in this whirlpool. and it would start to grind around and around and around and create this pothole. And there's a number of potholes in the two state parks that are on either side of the river there. One that's called the bottomless pit because it's actually 60 feet deep. And just imagine this debris, these small rocks that were just getting churned and churned around here in the whirlpool that carved out these potholes. And so you can hike along the dales there across the bluffs and check out these really unique geologic formations. If somebody wanted to go visit the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, what would you recommend? Is there an app? Is there a website? How do people go and find out more about this? Well, I'd steer people first to the website either for Wild Rivers Conservancy or the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. Their park rangers do an incredible job of setting up your trip, planning your trip. And it could be a section that you'd like to paddle. And they've got a great list of outfitters and shuttle drivers. So, you know, one great way to see the river, I would say, is putting in at Interstate State Park. That's just a little bit north of where our offices are in that iconic Dales area. You get to see these big basalt outcroppings. get in your kayak paddle on down um and you get to see the rolling bluffs and it's a mix of pine forests and oak savannas and you can paddle in about three hours and get to what's called osceola landing which is a national park landing there with great interpretive signs and rangers that are there and you can then get a shuttle back up to your car that you parked at the state park so if someone was coming here for the first time i would take them on a paddle down from Interstate State Park down to Osceola Bluff. And then, of course, back in Taylor's Falls, you've got these great river towns. You can stop and get ice cream. You can stop over in Wisconsin for a classic Wisconsin Supper Club dinner and have a great day on the river. Are motorboats allowed? Are engines or any type of motorized boat allowed on the river? On the lower St. Croix, up to a certain point, they have regulations in place. And so as you get further south in the river, it widens up, it opens up, and so you'll see more motorboat activity in the lower portion of the St. Croix. But on the upper St. Croix, Namakoggin, it's just so shallow that you actually don't see too many motorboats just out of the depth of the water there. Matt Poppleton, what is the website for the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, and what's the website for the Wild Rivers Conservancy? For the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, you can go to www.nps.gov slash SACN, S-A-C-N. That's kind of their shorthand for the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. And for Wild Rivers Conservancy, it's just www.wildriversconservancy.org. Matt Poppleton is the executive director of the Wild Rivers Conservancy, is the nonprofit group that helps support the National Park, St. Croix National Scenic Riverway. Matt Poppleton, our guest for a couple more minutes. We have a couple more questions. We're going to hold them on through the break. Stay right there. Then, of course, text messages. If you've got a text message for Matt about the St. Croix, certainly give us a holler. 1-844-2-McGraw. 1-844-262-4729. America at Night. Back in a moment. Relax. You're listening to America at Night with McGraw-Millhaven. Thank you. Let take a stroll through the park on America at Night with McGraw Our 250th anniversary of the country We are taking a look at some national parks The St Croix National Scenic River Array Matt Poppleton executive director of the non agency that works in conjunction with the Park Wild Rivers Conservancy. Matt, I hate to tell you this, you're half hour into the show and you have buried the lead. You were talking about mussels and the lake sturgeons. You haven't once mentioned the trout fishing that is allowed on the river. Talk about that for a minute. Does everybody fly fishing on the river? Well, mostly on the Namakoggin where there's trout fishing. And I'm looking forward to this summer. I've got a trip already booked with our most previous board chair, and he's a guide up on the Namakoggin. And we're going to be doing some trout fishing this summer. So it's great brook trout fishing there on the Nampakoggin. Some of those cold water streams that are feeding into there are incredible. So I'm looking forward to that. Are you going to dry fly, or what are you going to do? Are you going to fly fish? Well, I'm going to follow the lead from my guide and pay attention to him. There's no streamers. Not that I'm a very good fly fisherman, but I have fly fished in the past, if that's the correct grammar. And there's nothing more fun than catching a fish on a fly you tied. So it sounds like a great place to go. Yeah. Well, being on the drift boat, yeah, the guides, you know, have the drift boats, and you're just standing there at the front bow, and you've just got such great visibility of the river. And, again, it's so clear. You can just see all that's happening right below you. Even if you don't catch anything, it's an incredible experience. What about hunting? Is there any hunting going on around the area? There is. And it's an interesting kind of management because you've got the Federal National Park Service, but then you've got two states with their Department of Natural Resources. And so it's one of the few national parks that does allow hunting within the park. And those regulations are managed and set by the state DNRs. But it is allowed. Yeah. What are you hunting? A deer, I'm assuming? Primarily deer, yeah. And then some upland bird hunting is also popular. What about cross-country skiing? Can you do any cross-country skiing? Any trails for cross-country? Oh, yeah. Now you're speaking my language. There's lots of cross-country skiing. So there's a number of state parks that are also bordered along the Riverway. And so it's a great mix of a national park along with state parks. And so this past December, I was out there at William O'Brien State Park, which has incredible cross-country ski trails out there with the family. We had a great time. And then just this past weekend up on the Namakoggin is this, I don't know if you've heard of it down in St. Louis, but it's the American Berkabiner Ski Race, which is a marathon ski event that they have through the state forest up there. And as you're skiing through, you know, anywhere between 50 to 30 kilometers through the woods, you end by coming out on Hayward Lake. And so when you're on Hayward Lake, you're technically in the national park. So it's a great way to finish this big marathon event. You come on to Lake Hayward, you can ski across the lake, and you come into downtown Hayward where there's 30,000 spectators cheering you on across the finish line. So that just wrapped up this past weekend. I got to participate and then cheer along a bunch of friends as well and felt like I was, you know, recreating and also doing my job as the ambassador of the park. This sounds like a great weekend. Matt, how did you get involved in all this? Well, you know, at an early age, both my folks were school teachers. And so we had summers off and the privilege of being able to visit wilderness areas and national parks. And that just planted a seed in me to pursue a career that connects people to the outdoors and inspires them to protect it. So I've been lucky to have a full 20-plus year career of working for different organizations in the business sector and the nonprofit sector that help connect people to the outdoors. And working with Wild Rivers Conservancy and the National Park Service has been a great way to continue that work and expand it throughout an area that it's super fun to explore and get to know even more. Yeah. The St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, and it's been a national park since what, the late 60s? Since 1968, yeah. And your organization got started in 1911 as a way to protect the waterway. You mentioned the safety and the thriving nature of the mussels, which talks about how well the river is doing. In terms of water flow and water height and all that, how is the river doing otherwise? It's doing well. You know, it can really depend on how much snowfall we get during the winter. but we've had a good winter so far, and so water levels should be good. There's just a few dams along the river that still exist, and those can fluctuate the water levels. But overall, the water levels are in good shape. I could imagine at least the bird watching, right? I can only imagine the eagles that are there now, I would think. Bald eagles, great blue heron, it's incredible. When we do those paddles on the Namakoggan, it's just, it's like a bird show. You're just paddling down and you see bald eagles just kind of leapfrogging as you paddle on down the river. It's incredible. Yeah, it's some of those rivers, you know, people are like, oh, there's an eagle. No, there's not one. There's 70 eagles, right? I mean, the eagles have, what a great story about the eagles that have come back to such great numbers that when you do something like that, you see them all over the place. They're everywhere. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yep, it's very common. When I'm coming into work, I cross to St. Croix, I look to the north, it takes my breath away, I look to the south, and oftentimes there's a bald eagle that's just flying right on down over the river there as well. Crazy stuff. Matt Poppleton, Executive Director of the Wild Rivers Conservancy. Okay, Matt, one more time. How do we get a hold of the Wild Rivers Conservancy, and how do we get a hold of the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway? Well, you'll find us together most oftentimes, but if you want to find us in our respective websites, we're at wildriversconservancy.org, and the National Park Service, the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, is nps.gov.sacn. And if somebody wanted to think about taking a summer vacation, take a trip, wanted to find out more, wanted to plan a vacation or plan something on the river, what's the best way, and what's the best website to sort of check that out? I go right to the National Park Service. They've got a landing page that says how to plan your trip. You can pick up the phone and call the visitor center there as well, and they can help you plan your trip. That's what they do. That's their superpower is connecting people to the river and helping them plan their experiences. Matt Poppleton, Executive Director of Wild Rivers Conservancy. Matt, thank you very much for your time. Good luck, and thanks for checking in. Thanks so much. You got it. The Wild Rivers Conservancy and the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, part of our National Park Series. I guess we're doing it every other week. Every other Tuesday, we pick a national park and we get somebody on to the national park to talk about it. I believe the next park we're going to have, if I'm not mistaken, if it's not the next one, it's the one after that. It is the Gateway Arch in St. Louis, one in which I am somewhat familiar with, have been to the arch numerous times. But that is the smallest of the national parks. And it doesn't take you long before you start geeking out over national parks. Because once you start to scratch the surface and you start to realize how beautiful these lands are and how they came to be and what the Americans who come and visit. 900 people, a million people a year come to this river up between Minnesota and Wisconsin and enjoy fishing and hunting and camping out and bird watching and just enjoying the outdoors and enjoying nature. It's a great way to experience the great country that it is. And that's why we're celebrating the 250th anniversary of this great country, America at Night. Back in a moment. Celebrating the natural beauty of the United States, this is America at Night with McGraw-Milhill. Welcome to America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. Hey, we are back. 1-844-2-MGRAW, 1-844-262-4729. Those are the phone numbers. Those are the text messages. 1-844-2-MGRAW, 1-844-262-4729. That's the phone number. We'll start a little open phones a little early. We can do that. Text line is open. I've been gone the last couple of days, had a little minor procedure done, nothing major to worry about. And so all is well. And back behind the microphone here at America at Night, 1-844-2-MGRAW, 1-844-262-4729. Of all the news that has happened over the last couple of days, the one, and again, it's sort of bizarre, this Nancy Guthrie story, Do you see where they, the guy who went to the door, they've now gone back with the footage and they've seen him at the door again. So the night she was abducted, that apparently was the second time the guy in the mask was at the door. Now, he didn't have the knapsack on, but he had, his face was covered. And he was standing at the front door. Now, what does that tell you? I have no idea. Was it that were they casen the joint? Who knows? But now they've also upped the reward to $1 million. And Savannah Guthrie said today, I don't know if you had a chance to hear the news, but she said that we're holding out hope against hope, but reality is starting to set in that our mother may be gone and our mother may be in heaven. and she started crying and sort of talked about how they just want her back home and that we've sort of lost hope or in the process of losing hope. But the idea is to keep this in the public's eye, and with the million-dollar reward, you think somebody somewhere knows something and would then come forward with some type of information, right? That's the whole idea. You can't do this alone. You can't do this by yourself. And we all know people talk, even if it's the tightest circle in the world, somebody's going to tell somebody something somewhere, and somebody's going to see something, somebody's going to say something, and who knows, right? That's what they're hoping for. But what a bizarre turn of events that the person was at the door the night. Now, they didn't they didn't release. It was the night before, two nights before, a week before. I didn't see that. But I don't know what it tells you. But I've after the I guess if you're asking me if you're asking me my opinion and I'm you know, I don't have any insight into any of this. But my argument would be it was a random kidnap. It was a random break in. Somebody was watching the neighborhood. Somebody was watching the houses. Somebody thought it was a rich, affluent neighborhood. You could go in and you could steal a couple of jewels and a couple of necklaces. And they broke into that. They right. They cached the joint. They wanted to see what it was like. They wanted to see what the front door looked like. and they ultimately broke in only to find the woman in her bed. She got up. She saw them. They saw her. They took her as part of the, right, not expecting anybody to be home, and there you have your tragedy. I find it hard to believe that it was somehow targeted for Savannah Guthrie's mother. I find that really hard to believe that there was some type of dedicated effort to go grab Savannah Guthrie's mother. But, you know, stranger things have happened, obviously. But if you're asking me my opinion, it was a random burglary. They just went in to take whatever monies or jewels or anything, and they stumbled across the woman, and who knows what happened from there. 1-844-2-MGRAW, 1-844-262-4729. We can talk about that next hour. We can also talk about what's going on in Mexico. Man, this one's got more questions than it's got answers because it looks like the Mexican government is, right, they went after the Mexican cartels. That is a very, very different strategy than past Mexican presidents. Now, coming up tomorrow, I believe we're going to talk to a former DEA agent to get a sense of how powerful the Mexican cartels are, what's the point, what's going on, who is this El Mencho guy now that he's dead, what happens. A lot of people, unfortunately, think because the head of the Mexican cartel is now dead, somehow the Mexican cartel will cease to exist. That's not the way it works. When they went after who the the the Mark Bowen wrote that wonderful, wonderful book when they went after Pablo Escobar. Right. And they had the concentrated effort to go out to Pablo Escobar and got him and killed him. Right. nothing changed. They spent years, resources, millions of dollars to go get Pablo Escobar. And they went and they got him. And ultimately he died. And did that stop the drug trade? No. Did that weaken the drug cartel? No. What happens with any leadership? Once the head guy goes away, you promote from within and some junior executive takes over and business as usual. And so if you think going after the Mexican cartel by killing the leader is going to somehow stop the illegal drug trade, I think you're a little naive because that's not the way it works. The Mexican drug cartel is very powerful. How powerful? I don't even think we know how powerful. So powerful that some people are saying that this could jeopardize the World Cup and then other people are saying, no, what are you, crazy? The Mexican cartel is smart enough not to jeopardize the World Cup. The World Cup is going to bring thousands and thousands and thousands of tourists to Mexico. They don't want to disrupt the tourism trade to Mexico. That's their bread and butter. Who do you think they're selling the drugs to? Where do you think all this illegal activity ends up? So a lot of people are saying the World Cup is in jeopardy. I would find that very hard to believe. However, I do think, if you're asking me, that the World Cup in the United States is a little more strenuous due to the fact of people either not wanting to come to America anymore for fear of backlash. Las Vegas numbers are way down The international travel in Vegas is significantly down Because people don't want to come to the United States They're afraid they might come to the United States They're afraid of what happens if they come to the United States So there might be a lot of people who either can't get in Don't want to come in So that I think is a little bit bigger issue with the World Cup Than what's going on in Mexico But, man, what's going on in Mexico, that's tough to watch. You see these tourists who are minding their own business on a spring break vacation, and all of a sudden they're on a rooftop of a hotel watching their town get destroyed. Pretty crazy stuff. All right, here's what we'll do. We'll take a break. We're going to come back next hour and have full open phones, which means phone calls and text messages and everything else. 1-844-2-MIGRAL, 1-844-262-4729. You can start lining up right now. Of course, the text line is open. We've got lots of texts to get to over the last couple of days, so we'll get to all of those as well. If you can't call and you want to text, of course, you can always text, 1-844-2-MGRAH or 1-844-262-4729. However, I like the texts. I like the phone calls. So we'll step aside. I'll stop talking, and we'll take some phone calls. Lots to get to. We have the Olympic hockey to get to, the Olympics overall, Major League Baseball Spring training is getting going State of the Unions tonight We've got lots to get to Stay right there Our engineer tonight is Al Tinton Our engineer is Richard Good I'm McGraw Milhaven And this is America at Night on Westwood One Westwood One presents America at Night. Here's your host, McGraw-Milhaven. All right, it's open phones. It's Tuesday night. All day long, by the way, having Monday off. All day long I was convinced it was Monday, but it's actually Tuesday night. 1-844-2-MGRAH. I'll be a day behind all week long. 1-844-2-MGRAH. 1-844-262-4729. The hour is yours. It's open phones. I want to make a couple of comments about the hockey game, not necessarily the game itself, but we can certainly talk about the game, but the politics that has seeped in, in and around. Also, anybody see this story involving the British Oscars where Delroy Lindo and Michael B. Jordan took the stage and they were presenting, and somebody with Tourette's syndrome, who was actually part of one of the movies, had some tics and started yelling some racial slurs with these tics. And this caused quite a bit of controversy, so we want to get into some of that as well. But, of course, I will reserve that for a little bit later. We want to certainly get to the phones and get to the text messages, because this hour, I do all the talking in the first two hours, and then it's a chance for you guys and gals to chime in and tell me what you're thinking. 1-844-2-MGRAH, 1-844-262-4729. Let's go to those phones. Gil in San Antonio, thanks for holding on. Welcome to America at Night. Welcome back. Thanks, sir. First of all, did you get preempted tonight? Oh, I'm sure I did, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, the nature of the beast, it is what it is. Okay, I thought you'd start this hour by saying my fellow Americans, but you didn't. But okay. Three things. Last week, there was a major upset by my Creighton Blue Jays at the University of Connecticut basketball game. You're a Cornhusker. I'm a Blue Jay. Yes. And I don't know if you noticed that or not. I think Creighton usually does very well with baseball, collegiate baseball. They host the College World Series, as I recall. But also, two things about topics from last week. John Hay, you had an author on, a historian talking about John Hay. Yes. As it turned out, after my imprisonment in Mexico, my father was a collector of stamps and documents, and I had a State Department document that had been signed by John Hay. Oh, wow. And I donated it to the State Department for helping me when I was in my predicament in Mexico, number one. And there's a very famous place in the Philippines where I lived for a long time called Camp John Hay. And it is the summer residence of the American ambassador to the Philippines. Secondly, Jesse Jackson. Yes. You mentioned that he fathered a child out of wedlock. He was also fathered out of wedlock. I had almost had a business dealing with his half-brother, a man by the name of Noah Robinson. Do you know the story of Noah Robinson? I do not. Noah Robinson was Jesse's half-brother. His father was married to Mrs. Robinson, Noah Robinson. Noah Robinson amassed a great fortune. He was a graduate like Donald Trump of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. And I had a piece of property outside the Army base in El Paso, and he wanted to put a jack-in-the-box restaurant there. He had jack-of-the-box franchises all over the place. But he was arrested, charged with murder, and got a life sentence. And I looked up on the Internet, he's still alive. And when he reached his 70th birthday, he was released to about his last few years in Chicago with his two daughters. Wow. But he was actually convicted. So no one ever built the jack-in-the-box then on your land? No. Interesting. Right at the time he was arrested was when we were negotiating the deal. So that put the kibosh on that. How about that? Hey, Gil, when did you graduate from Creighton? I didn't. Creighton had a satellite campus here in El Paso. Oh, okay. I'm sorry, in San Antonio. You probably didn't know that. I did not know that. And right now, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has a satellite campus here in San Antonio. Really? Yeah, they work with the United States Army. and if you take certain medical courses in the Army, you can enroll. I enrolled in Creighton. If you take the same courses today, you could enroll in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and get full college credit. How about that? I got 87 semester hours credit from Creighton. Gil, interesting stuff. Thanks. Yeah, grill. I got to move on. Thanks for the phone call. You'll have a good day. Thanks for checking in. One eight four four two McGraw. One eight four four two six two forty seven twenty nine. The hour is yours. Open phones. So let me throw out this. This controversy with this British Oscars. So there's a movie called I swear. And it's I guess it's a document or a docudrama. It's not a documentary. It's a movie based on the real life of this man. John Davidson, who suffers from Tourette's syndrome. And oddly enough, the actor who plays John Davidson in this movie, I swear, ends up winning this British Oscar. Well, during the presentation, Delroy Lindo, who's an actor you may or may not know, and Michael B. Jordan, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, two African-Americans, are up on stage presenting one of the awards. and this John Davidson who's at this at this Oscars, at this British Oscars is suffering from Tourette's Syndrome and in the middle of their presentation he starts yelling racial slurs and dare I say the mother of all racial slurs loud enough that it can be heard not only on the television, but to the presenters up on stage. Then when it's rebroadcasted, the BBC doesn't edit it out. And when it starts streaming, it's not edited out. Only later was it edited out. And only later did the BBC apologize for the strong and offensive language. Also, Alan Cummings, the host of the show, I thought handled it beautifully. went up on stage and said, ladies and gentlemen, you may have heard some language that might have seemed, and I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something along the lines of, you might have heard some language that seemed untowards towards the presenters. However, we assure you that it is somebody, I don't know how he said it, but he said it so eloquently, something along the lines of somebody suffering from Tourette's syndrome, and this is part of their disability, and there's never any malice towards it. There involuntary tics in which they have no control over So thank you very much for understanding Let us move on The man suffers from a disability What I find offensive is that the BBC apologized for this man's handicap. Right? The BBC apologized for this man's, right, the handicap. His disability. They apologized for his disability. He suffers from Tourette's syndrome. Imagine if the man was in a wheelchair and it took him too long to get up the stairs because he was in a wheelchair. Would you apologize for him being in a wheelchair? No. But you apologize because the man has Tourette's syndrome? And I don't know who's all that offended. Who's offended? The nameless, faceless Internet people? The man had Tourette's syndrome. It's a disability. You cannot help yourself. Yes, I understand that everything has to be in context. And the fact that there were these racial surs that were blurted out by this man, it's understandable. This is what happens when you have Tourette's syndrome. And what a great teachable moment for the world to get a better understanding of this man's disability and the people who suffer from this disability. Instead, people have to apologize. And for what? For this man's disability? You're apologizing because this man has a verbal tick and he can't control it? What are you apologizing for? I find that so offensive. Why should this man feel embarrassed? Because he has a disability, and his disability showed up on a broadcast for the British Oscars. I am, of all the things to be offended over, this one really sticks in my craw. Right? Does that make any sense? 1-844-2-MIGRAUGH, 1-844-262-4729, America at Night. Phone calls, let's get some phone calls, let's get some text messages. America at Night, back in a moment. Call now, 844-262-4729. That's 844-2-MGRAW. The floor is yours. Call or text 844-262-4729. That's 844-2-MGROFF. All right, it's 1-844-2-MUGRAW, just like the lady said, 1-844-262-4729. I want to chime in on this hockey game from Saturday, or I guess that's Sunday morning. First it was the women. I watched quite a bit of that women's game, and that was exciting. And I don't know, I'm a casual hockey fan. I'm a casual hockey watcher. I just don't know a lot about hockey. But I like it. I don't know why I don't watch more of it. But, you know, Olympics, you know, the whole thing, I found myself gravitating towards it. And so congrats to the women who won on Friday. And then Sunday morning, I made sure I got up early so I could watch the game on Sunday morning. And I am certainly no expert, but it certainly seemed like Canada did everything right. And they really outskated the Americans, but they just couldn't put the puck in the net. And so ultimately it goes to overtime. and ultimately the United States scores and wins. And that Connor Hellenbeck, the goalie for the Americans, man, that guy deserves two gold medals. That guy was unbelievable. But it was a great game. The Americans win. As an American, I was thrilled. It was exciting. Also, the fact that it was the date. The last time Americans won the gold is from the 1980 Olympic hockey team on the same day. It was wonderful. And then, of course, it had to turn political. And I'm not going to, I don't defend everything Donald Trump does. And I don't defend everything Donald Trump says. But the people who don't like Donald Trump, you need to pick and choose your battles. because you lose credibility when every single thing you go to the mat on. So he calls the hockey team. And the hockey team, look, I don't know any of these guys, but I can pretty much guess that the last thing these guys want to do, any of these athletes, most of the athletes, don't want anything to do with the politics of today. They don't want to be yelled at. They don't want to be upsetting. They just want to go. They want to run their races, do their events, collect their medals, come home. They don't care. And so these hockey players, right, they now win the gold, and the president of the United States calls you. What are you supposed to do? Sorry, I don't like his policies on Iran, so I'm not going to answer the phone call. No, you take the phone call. Hello, sir. Thank you very much. Right. You play nice. Even if you dislike the guy, even you do it because that's part of the responsibility of being an American. Right. And so Donald Trump makes a quip. Hey, come to the come to the State of the Union. I think it'll be a whole lot of fun. Sure. Happy to do it. Thank you very much. Oh, and I guess I have to invite the women or they'll impeach me. He was just being fun. He was trying to crack a joke. and all of a sudden every cable news outlet and every single somebody who's got an axe to grind with Trump. Oh, my goodness. Right. They're clutching their pearls. This is the most offensive thing. I can't believe he was so disrespectful to the women. He wasn't disrespectful to the women. He was just trying to crack a joke. Look, this is where the anti-Trumpers lose me all the time. There's plenty of things to criticize Donald Trump about. There are plenty of things to say, I don't like him, I don't like his policies, I don't like him as a person. There's a whole laundry list of things. But to just die on the sword of his comments about the women's hockey team, and then, of course, you have the Hughes mom who's involved, then you have to ask her a political question. Now you have to ask all these hockey players political questions. I'm sorry, with all due respect for these hockey players. asking them a political question is ridiculous are they in are they are they politicians no they're hockey players and they just won the gold medal so asking them what their thought process is on the on the supreme court tariff decision is ridiculous it would be like asking a lawyer or one of the supreme court justices about the power play goal right i mean it's it's it's ridiculous I don't get it I don't get it everything does not have to be politics I get you don't like Donald Trump I get you don't like anything about Donald Trump the hockey team is an innocent bystander in all of this they're going to turn down an invitation to the State of the Union because then that turns political right you're asked by the President, you go that's what you do anyway, it's my two cents what are your thoughts? 1-844-2-Mcgraw 1-844-262-4729. America at Night. Back in a moment. This is America at Night with McGraw-Millhaven. The text line is open. Send us a message at 844-2-MGRAW. That's 844-262-4729. Yeah, that's the phone numbers. 1-844-2-Mcgraw. 1-844-262-4729. The State of the Union is over with. It is the longest State of the Union speech and the longest address to Congress ever. Donald Trump pulled off a rare double-double feat. Your thoughts on that? I watched most of it here in the background. I didn't get a chance to hear it. I'll read it tonight, and then we could, I guess, talk about it tomorrow. So if you are so inclined, 1-844-2-MGRAH, 1-844-262-4729. People, the talking heads are spinning now, and they're spinning out of control. So it is what it is. Hey, if somebody knows anything about Bitcoin, give me a call, because there's a story in the news today that doesn't make any sense to me. 1-844-2-MGRAH. Lots of things don't make sense to me. 1-844-2-MGRAH, 1-844-262-4729. Bitcoin was supposed to be one of these great equalizers. And that it can't be stolen because the blockchain, there's a record of it. No matter where it goes, it will always be. So therefore, it can't be stolen. It can't be manipulated. It can't be, right? And then, of course, you hear people stealing people's Bitcoin. You hear people getting kidnapped for their Bitcoin. and then you hear people who lose their password and can't remember their password and then lose their bitcoin because they don't have the password no seriously that's true because there is no bank you know how when you go to your bank and you go to your online bank or your bank online and the password doesn't work and there's a button that says forgot your password and then you can like send in for a link or call the office and they'll reset your password, right? If you try it too many times and it doesn't work, then they lock you out. Then you have to call and you have to tell them who you are, your mother's maiden name, your address, all these other pertinent information to prove who you are, right? Well, with Bitcoin, there is no bank. Bitcoin, there is no customer service. It just, it exists. And so if you forget the password, which there have been stories of people forgetting the password, you're just out of luck. There's nowhere to go. You just don't have access to the Bitcoin. So if you bought it for a penny and it's now $160,000, or what is it now, $60,000, just $65,000, you don't, sorry. Then comes this story that, and maybe somebody out there understands this, but it's really very confusing. Apparently, Anthropic, right? Is it Anthropic was the one that noticed, or was it ByteDance? It might have been ByteDance. ByteDance was the company. Yeah, it was ByteDance. So ByteDance apparently helped somebody in Iran with a $1.7 billion Bitcoin transaction. Okay. So, and then people are all up in arms. How dare you? How dare you help this money go to some Iranian that will end up in the hands of terrorists? Well, isn't that the whole idea of cryptocurrency? Isn't that why it's created? So that you can cross countries and cross borders and there's no rules. It just exists. And so now we're shocked that somehow $1.7 billion of a cryptocurrency flowed in from Binance accounts to these Iranians. What did you want them to do? It's the purest form of an open market. And if drug dealers are using it to square their drug deals and child sex rings are using it to pay off the coyotes and the terrorists use it to pay off people to get what they need. That's what cryptocurrency is. That's why it exists. So I don't I don't understand. I don't understand the controversy. Yeah. Binance, which was the guy was pardoned by Trump. I don't know, whenever it was, a couple months ago, right? He made a pardon to the founder. The guy spent four months in federal prison for his role in the firm's crimes. And now the Pentagon's all upset with him because they violated something. But they're a cryptocurrency sort of clearinghouse. That's what they do. It doesn't make any sense to me. Tony in Montreal. Good evening. Welcome to America at Night. McGraw, how are you, man? I think that's a good take on cryptocurrency. As I say, I'm always listening, and then, you know, I guess I wanted to talk about the twain she'll never meet in the United States after I heard the Trump speech today, and then the Spanberger response. It's like you're talking about two different movies. It's like you can't get the same guy watching the same movie with the same outlook. You know, it's a love story on one side, and it's a horror story. It's a Rorschach. It's a Rorschach test. I hold up this image. What does it look like? To you, it looks like a monkey. To me, it looks like a banana. It's the same thing. No, it's amazing. Maybe some of these guys down in Washington should start drinking some Moosehead. What do you think? you know my thoughts on Moosehead the greatest beer I ever had was in Toronto at a bar and it was a Moosehead well maybe they would get some happiness to themselves but more importantly I want to talk to you about that hockey game alright go for it your expertise you call up the show every night and talk hockey Canada did everything but win the game right yeah but you know what I say The analogy for me is Marciano versus Jersey Joe Wolcott. Jersey Joe was supposedly over the hill. He was, I believe, close to the end of his 30s, like 39 or close to 40. And Marciano was like 32, and he was at the peak of his game. And for 12 rounds, he just destroyed Marciano. He was running him around the ring and made him look like a rookie. And then in the 13th round, you see this lightning strike. It's a lightning bolt. I've seen that punch, and it ended the fight on one shot. He's the champ. He took a beating for 12 rounds, and he took him out on one punch. Now, did the Americans beat us into the ground? No. They competed. They took advantage of their chances. We had our chances. We had a five-on-three with eight minutes left. We did not score. But at the end of the day, if we fire 60 shots at your goalie, and you fire 30 at our goalie and you score two goals and we score one, to the spoils go the victor. And congratulations to the Americans because they stuck it out and they played. And I thought, you know, of course it was an exciting game, super exciting, you know, texting my son every three seconds about what's going on. He's sitting in a bar in Montreal with his buddies and, you know, the bar's open. And I said, are you sure the bar is going to be open at 730 in the morning? Yeah, Dad, it's going to be open. And the whole, like I said, you know, the euthanasia departments in the country went crazy on Sunday night. You know, it was a flood of calls to the euthanasia departments. That's a joke, by the way. Well, look, I'll say this. I mean, I don't watch a lot of hockey, but I, you know, the hockey, the Canadians did themselves proud. There's nothing to be ashamed of. It was a great game, right? the American goalie gets his stick and it gets behind him and he's able to save it from behind. I've never seen that before. I've never seen that before. Never in my life. Never, never, never, never seen that in my life. Never. You've got to feel sorry for the Canadian guy that pushed the puck to the net going, oh, I've got an open net. I'll just tap it in like a ping pong ball. No, bro. You've got to smash that puck into the net. He saved it. That's the first rule. He saved it behind him. And then how about the Canadian who hits two posts? He hits one post and then he hits the other post. I've never seen that either. Well, he's a superstar player, but I'm going to just say this to you. You're a pitcher, right? You could be the best pitcher in the world, and you're as good as Sandy Koufax, but if I pitch you nine innings one game and I pitch you nine innings the next game and I pitch you nine innings the next game, you're going to be tired. And I think, my personal opinion, and a lot of people in Canada know hockey, they overrode those horses. You cannot ride Secretariat in three consecutive races back-to-back-to-back without giving her a break. And those players you're talking about, they hit the post. They were under stress. They were tired. That's no excuse. They played the game like anybody else. But you know what? That's, you know, the cookie crumbles like that. And the hockey players, like I said to a lot of people in Canada, I called my son up. I said, don't you ever tap the puck in when you have an open crease. Drive it through the net as if you're going to rip the net off with that puck. Fire that puck. And that's how I teach my kids to fire the puck. Open or close net, fire the puck. It didn't help that Sidney Crosby was hurt. But when it was all said and done, it was a great game. That's a sad thing. That was bad. Yeah, it was a great game. It was a great game. And, Tony, I'll give you the last word. What do you got? I'll say this, okay? If you want to be a great competitor, you want to be competing against the greatest in front of you. If you want to be the champ, you've got to beat the champ. So in my estimation, I wanted Canada to play the best, and I wanted them to do their best. And in fair competition, that's where the champion is determined. When the two equal opposing forces are playing in a fair square game, and whoever wins, wins. There's no loss of humility or shame in losing to the Americans. Well, you are our friends. You are our cousins. Yes, you get bragging rights for the next couple of years. But guess what? The world championships are next year. There's three. There's four consecutive world championships. We've got the junior worlds. We have the girls. You forgot the girls beat. Your girls beat our girls. So those girls are going to be waiting for you next year. So it goes on and on and on. But the two greatest countries in the world are still Canada and the USA. Tony, thanks. Congrats to you guys. Congrats to you guys. Tony from Montreal. Tony, thanks for checking in. Tony mentioned Sandy Koufax. You know, I met Sandy Koufax once. Let me tell you my Sandy Koufax story. So I was at a Bob Gibson golf tournament, and Sandy Koufax was there playing. And then at night they had the nighttime dinner. and it just so happens that I go up to the table in which Sandy Koufax is sitting in also happens to be the same table as my old pitching coach. So I go over to the table and my pitching coach, who was talking to Sandy Koufax at the time, proceeds to introduce me to Sandy Koufax and says, Sandy Koufax, I'd like to introduce you to one of my former players. Sandy Koufax, McGraw-Milhaven, McGraw-Milhaven, Sandy Koufax. So Sandy pulls out a seat and says, sit down. So I sit down. I shake his hand. He shakes my hand. We have a 10-minute conversation. Couldn't have been any more gracious. Couldn't have been any more professional. Couldn't have been any more caring. Listened intently. Told me a story. He listened to my stories. couldn't have been any more gracious. And so the name McGraw-Milhaven, that's a mouthful, right? And would you blame somebody if meeting me for the first time and then 10 minutes later you forget my name, right? That happens 99.999% of the times, right? You meet me, have a nice conversation, like, what was that guy's name again, McGraw? What's his first name, right? So after about 10, 15 minutes of a lovely conversation, I said, I'm sorry, I've taken up too much of your time. Thank you very much. This was an honor of a lifetime meeting somebody like you. Thank you very much. And I put my hand out to shake his hand. And Sandy Koufax says, McGraw, the pleasure was all mine. Thank you very much. Now, how does one of the greatest pitchers of all time remember my name? How many golf tournaments has he been? How many times has somebody come up to him and bothered him at dinner or lunch or the car wash? And he's gracious every single time. And here he gets introduced to me. 10 minutes later, 15 minutes later, he still remembers my name to say, McGraw, it was a pleasure chatting with you. Have a nice night. That don't happen every day. Sandy Koufax, a true, true gentleman of the game. But again, right, that sticks with you for 100 years, right? Sandy Koufax meets a million people. He'll never remember that. But for me, it was a moment that will last a lifetime. For Sandy Koufax, just another charity golf game. But he was nice enough and respectful enough to remember my name. It's pretty special. Anyway, 1-844-2-MGRAW, 1-844-262-4729, America at Night, back in a moment. Join the conversation. Call 844-2-MGRAW, America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. Join the nightly conversation. America at Night with McGraw-Milhaven. All right, so I'll leave you with this. Over the weekend, I watched two movies. One, I watched Miracle. I re-watched the Kurt Russell movie that came out a while ago about the 1980 Olympic hockey team. That movie is great. I don't care if you like hockey or not. Kurt Russell, man, that guy, that is a great movie. And he plays a tremendous Herb Brooks. That is a great movie. The hockey looks so real. And the players. That's a great movie. If you want to take a look at a great movie. Miracle. The story of the 1980 Olympic hockey team. There's also, I guess, a documentary that's out now on HBO as well. But I also watched over the weekend that movie with Kate Hudson. and Hugh Jackman. Song sung blue. And I might be giving away a spoiler alert. So heads up for a second. But there's a scene in the movie. I mean, it's already on, it's already streaming. I don't even think I even paid for it. I think it was on free streaming. So if you haven't seen that movie, I apologize if I'm giving something away. But one of the storylines is, right, it's a story of how Hugh Jackman is a struggling alcoholic who is, you know, loves music. And that's his new obsession. And he turns into some type of Neil Diamond band, Neil Diamond tribute band. And he meets Kate Hudson and they have this love affair and this romance. It's a wonderful movie. Very nice movie. but there's a scene towards the end of the movie where uh kate hudson is uh gardening and a car misses the turn right it's a car at the end of the street and it's a house at the end of the street and the car misses the other turn and runs into her and you know does some some damage to her i want to give away the whole story but i i be honest so i looked up and yeah that actually happened that's the real part of the other story i gotta tell you there have been homes and apartments that i have not rented because i've said oh wait that's at the end of the street somebody misses the turn they're going to be in our our living room i don't want to i i don't want to buy this home i don't want to rent this home i don't and every time i did it people laughing like oh like that's gonna happen oh like a like a plane's gonna land in your house right i have purposely not bought homes or apartments because of, hey, this is right here on the road. What's if somebody makes a wrong turn? All of a sudden, you know, they're in our living room. And it turns out it happens. So I felt somewhat vindicated watching that movie. Song Sung Blue. It's a good movie. Check it out. Also Miracle with Kurt Russell. Check it out. Two good movies. All right, we're done for the night. Thanks for putting up with us. Our executive director is Alex Sinton. Our engineer tonight is Richard Good. I'm McGraw-Millhaven. We're back tomorrow night with a whole host of guests and shows and phone calls. This is America at Night on Westwood One. So long, everybody. The C.J. Pearson Show. Every week, we'll take on the biggest cultural, political, and moral battles in America head on. C.J. presents the most passionate voices in the black community. When you're going around and talking to people in actual communities, you get to know what people actually care about. As a black man, why can't I be the first one in my family to graduate from college? Why can't it be me? Shift the way that I think about the world. Bold truth, real conviction, zero permission. This is The C.J. Pearson Show. The C.J. Pearson Show. Follow and listen on your favorite platform.