6/3/26: Larry Ellison Net Worth Skyrockets On Data Centers, ICE Protests Erupt At Delaney Hall

This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hey guys, Sagar and Crystal here. Independent media just played a truly massive role in this election and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else. So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media and we hope to see you at breakingpoints.com. A huge congratulations to Larry Ellison, the data center build out and the AI boom has vaulted him. We can put up this first element. He's involved in the third richest man in the world. You know, I love it when good things happen to good people. Right. We'd love to celebrate success here. We call it karma. We do. It's absolutely beautiful. His net worth went up, I think, $70 billion in the last month. It's modest. Because he's, you know, he really, he woke up earlier. You know, he put in the hours and when you do that, you know, success comes your way. Coming out of that, what he'd like to see is Steny Hoyer, the longtime representative from Southern Maryland, who was the number two in the house for really many decades, wants to see him replaced by an Oracle lobbyist, Larry Ellison, of course, the founder of the CIA-linked Oracle. And Adrian Boafo now running former Steny Hoyer campaign manager has been a lobbyist for Oracle, for data centers, for the last five years and is now running with Hoyer's support to replace him. And standing in his way, Harry Dunn is a Capitol Police officer, but also Prince George's counsel woman, Wally Blaguet. We are joined today by Wally Blaguet. So your opponent's boss made $70 billion last month. But, you know, anything can happen. So thank you for being here in the studio. We really appreciate it. Right. And we have no tolerance for the billionaires living big in United States while the rest of us are suffering. And that's why I'm running. What's so crazy is we could have minted 71 new billionaires in the last month. Instead, one billionaire is worth $71 billion more. The richer are getting richer. It is getting out of control. It is in our faces. And it's like they just don't care anymore. And that's why we are ground zero for the attacks. Like it is amazing how we have billionaires who are getting richer, but yet and still we're ripping. Our federal workers have gotten their jobs taken. Our federal contractors, anything DEI, you understand? Maryland's fifth congressional district has two of the wealthiest African-American communities in the country that have been torn down because contracts have been taken. Anything DEI in this administration has been snatched. Like we literally are hearing weekly from people looking for new opportunities because they can barely make payroll. We have federal workers who are piecemealing side jobs to get the income that they have before which they're barely getting. We are dealing with the highest grocery bills, utility bills as you mentioned, one of my opponents is a lobbyist for Oracle. And we have data centers that are on our grid. We are on the same grid as the capital of data centers. Tell us about this, yes. Is this a big issue we're in? It is a huge issue. In Prince George's, I stopped the data center in Prince George's. We have ones that they just stopped in Charles County and Calvert is not having it. So we have at least three of the five jurisdictions within congressional five fighting data centers. And yet and still we're looking at Oracle possibly, and they even before the $4 million that's coming from AI, crypto, Oracle, all of these things, they were getting money from Oracle data center folks. And I would just tell you this, our bills are going up high. We are on the same grid. We are on a 13 state grid with the same grid as the capital data centers, Virginia. So that's why our bills are even higher than other areas. We are struggling to stop. We have in Prince William County, 20 hyper skilled data centers coming up. And if that and our PJM, our administrator told us, if the hyper skilled data centers keep coming up, we are going to have blackouts. So we are in trouble. And it's because of data centers. We have got to pause data centers. I am full supportive Senator Sanders bill, pause moratorium on data centers. In fact, I introduced one in Prince George's County when we were gonna have one at the Landover Mall. And Senator Van Hollen's bill that requires them to bring their own generation. Their pressure on the grid is making it worse for everyone. And then if you elect a lobbyist that is a data center lobbyist, it will get worse. You're almost like asking for increasing utility bills. And yet instead we have, as you said, the Oracle man is now richer than he ever has. And we have seniors that can't pay their bills. In fact, my office, we're paying bills. I feel like if Howard Zen had been immortal and was around today, like writing a new book, it'd be like a Larry Ellison Oracle lobbyist trying to replace Steny Hoyer in Southern Maryland. Now, the thing that makes this race interesting though, is there seem like there are 255 people running. How many people running in this race? It's 23 now. We had one drop out for the Democratic side. Doesn't include the Republican side. And it's because Horace stayed in office for almost, he stayed in office longer than I've been born. So it is, he has been 45 years in office. And that has caused people to have to say, this is a moment, and I will tell you this, the suffering, I know that we have people I'm running against that I don't know very well, but what I know is that they're mostly laid off in federal workers that are just sick of it and deciding they wanna get involved. It is the suffering that's going on that's causing the 24 people to run. Because people are seeing, we've never seen this before. Like 20 years ago, this was the middle America where they were taken away those factory jobs and those factory jobs were leaving the country. Now it's us. We are in little federal workers are losing jobs and they cannot find anything that will pay them or give them anything before. And the ones who've keeping their jobs, they feel that they have been pretty much, nobody appreciates them. And meanwhile this is happening, we're spending a billion dollars a day in the Iran war. While we've got people who have been told their jobs were cut to save money. Oh, go ahead. Correct me if I'm wrong, in your district, whenever there's a government shutdown, a lot of your workers are contractors. And the actual employees will get back pay, but the contractors get stiffed usually. Yeah, but understand don't, because the employees, if they hear this, they will just cringe, right? Because the reality is that as you're waiting, there's a late bill, there's bill payments that need to be paid. Back pays better than no back pays. Yeah, and then they are looking at back pay, but the reality is that getting all those late fees, waiting for things to come, money come. I mean, there were people that called and said, I know it's a shutdown, but while I'm about to get my light turned off because we're already behind. So is that then the federal contractors? Yes, they don't get jobs. And they, well, federal contracts even worse, we have about, in Prince George's County alone, we have about 75,000 federal workers. And in each county, they have a big number. But what's even bigger is the federal contractors. And federal contracts don't have the same protection. So they don't get the notice. They don't get, a lot of them are getting last minute notice that they have been, the contracts have been ended. And they don't get all of these packages and all that that's required with a federal worker. So we have federal contractors who are just getting quick notice that they've been late, that they're gonna be laid off and no money to really go. Like people are struggling. We did put out something about paying bills from what the nonprofit, cause we fund a nonprofit. And we had to say no to a lot of people. So it is struggle right now. I think that it is something that many people are not used to. So they're trying to kind of go through it. So right now what a whore your endorsement 10 years ago would have failed to do. It would be over. Cause I've been a council member for four years now in Prince George's County. And prior to that, I was a labor lawyer involved in the community. I had a show chat with the lawyer. I've run against a ticket before. And when I ran against a ticket that was normal times, people would just say, look, I know these people, I'm gonna vote for whoever they recommend. Now we went door knocking yesterday. People are asking questions. They say we got to research candidates because the hurt is too much. Yeah, and I was gonna ask, I mean, so your opponent might say data centers, people are struggling in PG County. They need jobs. Data centers bring jobs. Data centers bring tax relief. We've been played before. Right, so tell us, and I was also curious when you're talking about this on the campaign trail, what you're hearing from people because we're not being told by Kevin O'Leary and others that this is just a giant Chinese psychological operation on the American public. China is making us mad at data centers. What are you hearing? Well, we're here. So we'll put it like this. This was before this election. People found out in Prince George's County, they have fast track data centers. The prime administration have fast track data centers. The council done, the county executive. When we came in, we didn't even know about the fast track aid. But what happened was all of a sudden, the word got to the community that one of the data centers was at permanent. And we found people called the office demanding, screaming. We had an event where people took over about almost 1,000 people showed up screaming and yelling. And they were like, why do we have this? We were already looking into the issue. And I think we had a qualified data center task force to look into the issue. But then I did a pause because I was like, no fast tracking, everything has to stop. The reality is that what's getting people the bills. People are seeing a thousand dollar bill a month. And people who, I used to have a bill that was less than $100, even I myself. And are you built? Well, they meant to you, yes. That I got a $600 bill in January. And so if you were getting that, I had an 85, I mean, it is really, I had an 85 year woman who said that she's got a $1,500 bill. She doesn't know. If you have an older house, it's even worse. So that's what's really driving the frustration. And I think people are feeling like with a data center, they're seeing a lot of things, a lot of the information online. They wanna know how does this impact their life? How does it impact their environment? How does it impact their water? So what we know is my opponent has been quiet on what his work is with data centers. He even says it's education, but the reality is that Oracle is building data centers. So he's not even trying to own it and say, listen, I was bringing jobs. He's just don't wanna talk about it. We know that the job count for a data center, for a regular data center is about 12 to 15. Right. And so here, we are talking about, and they even said that what's even worse is that a lot of the jobs are remote. So arguably they could hire somebody from another state. Right. And so you might not need someone in town. Now the unions will argue, and I know that because they were the ones that I found out that my opponent worked for, data center, I found out through the unions. The unions actually says, well, this is unionized jobs. But the reality is that the construction jobs, those are temporary jobs. I am pro labor. I am a labor lawyer. So I believe any data center built should be built under a labor agreement. However, is this good for the residents? The answer is no. No, no, no. So you also made news in Prince George's County as you were pushing a ceasefire resolution. Yes. Talk about what you did after October 7th, what the pushback has been and how that's playing into the race. Because Adrian Boff, of course, because this is a Howard Zinn story, also has the support of Democratic Majority for Israel. I don't know if APAC has officially gotten in yet. They have. APAC's in. Yes, APAC. And DMFI is basically an APAC officer. Right, right, right. Yeah, so we, when October 7th, and of course, I am in no support of Hamas actions. However, the visuals of those killings in Gaza got to me. We did a ceasefire resolution. I tried to lobby my colleagues to do a permanent ceasefire resolution. A lot of people were afraid because of APAC. But I wasn't because I felt strongly that this was wrong on all sides. We shouldn't have Hamas killing people. We shouldn't have an Israel government killing people. So we did a ceasefire rally with the Muslim community and Christian community. We had pastors. We had everyone come out. And so now, of course, we're not fore-putting our money into a war that makes no sense, especially when our federal workers are not back to work. We are not for just giving arms with no restrictions. And that's not being anti-Semitic. That is just the position that America should take. They would take it with any other country. Right. Wallablegay, candidate for Maryland's fifth congressional district. Where can people find more? Go to wallablegay.com. W-A-L-A-B-L-E-G-A-Y. I've been an activist a lot in Prince George's County. They know me. And my work has been known around the community. So we're on the ground. And what we see, don't let the $4 million of AI, crypto, and all that. So that's the number we got. Fool you into thinking that this race is over. We're talking about us. An election is two weeks, roughly. All right. So we'll be watching it closely. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you. We're joined now by Orrin Kass. He's the founder and chief economist over at American Compass. Orrin, thanks for coming back on the show. Thank you guys for having me. Fresh off an interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Besant last night at an American Compass event. In disclosure, I'm an American Compass member and a big fan of American Compass, of course. What does it mean, Orrin? I go to events. You get a free dinner every once in a while. No, no. There's no financial relationship. We just we are trying to support a network of policy professionals, journalists, lawyers, folks in government who are nerds. It would say like, would this be true? Remember, it means like you get an AMA for free or something. We should have something like that. But no, it means we're hopefully working together on improving the policy environment in this town. Right. And now you are out with a new initiative on American citizenship. We can put this up on the screen. American Compass has this new Reclaiming American Citizenship Initiative announced last night. And we might have to add this in post, but just announced. And Orrin, we're going to ask you all about what the you're trying to do on the right to build a sort of initiative or to build a framework for how the right should be thinking about citizenship right now, especially as let's put F1 on the screen. This is protests erupting outside of Delaney Hall in New Jersey. And, Ryan, you could probably tell us more about the left's mobilization here. Obviously, this is over the treatment of people detained, which, again, it gets us back to this conversation about what it means to be a citizen and the like. But the left is outside of Delaney Hall. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere. Right. There are hunger strikes going on inside over, on the one hand, over conditions also access to different kinds of food, also over the protesting kind of the entire apparatus. We could actually roll F4, because Hassan Piker was there recently. Earlier on the show, we talked about Adam Hamoui, New Jersey congressional candidate, who just won last night. Hamoui and Hassan Piker went to the Delaney protests. And here's Piker reading out some of the demands from the hunger strikers and protesters inside. Where are the Delaney Hall hunger strikers demanding? Many people have questions about what is happening inside of Delaney Hall. The detainees on hunger strike have stated that their demands are, number one, to meet with the governor. They want to meet with Governor Mickey Sherrill to go inside of the facility and meet the actual detainees. Number two, they want the release of the medically vulnerable people. They demand the immediate release of those with serious medical conditions. Number three, release young and elderly detainees. They demand the immediate release of young and elderly people. And number four, freedom. We're not striking to demand better conditions and treatment. We're doing this to demand our freedom. And they've said that they're going to continue the strike until they get heard. The hunger strike is not about improving the conditions of the facility necessarily, but to meet these demands. Most recently, they want medical attention to the members of the AMB who are the targets for retaliation. Shut down Delaney Hall. And protesters have alternately accused New Jersey Governor Mickey Sherrill of either collaborating with ICE here or abandoning them. But meanwhile, put up F3 here, she has sued the facility over unsanitary conditions and in particular for barring access to health inspectors. She has said, if there's actually nothing to hide, if everything's fine in there, why are you blocking state health inspectors from going inside? About 10,000 plus people have gone through this facility. Most of them, I think the median stay is about nine days. 70% or so have no criminal record, which means that some 30% do. And so, Warren, thanks for being here. The piece that you wrote, you describe it as an elevation of the idea of citizenship. And as I was reading it, I was thinking, as far as I remember, the idea of citizen kind of originates sort of with the French Revolution. I think the American Revolution, which inspired the French Revolution. But people in the streets of Paris were calling themselves like citizen so-and-so, citizen so-and-so. And the purpose was to do pretty much what you're suggesting in the essay here, which is to establish kind of a level of baseline humanity and equality among the people and to say. This is sort of Roman, the Republic. Yeah, well, there's that too. And to say that we, right, and a call back to that, to say that we have duties and responsibilities to the state, there are things that we are obliged to do for the state. And there are things the state then is obliged to do for us because we are citizens. And it's a two-way street. But I don't know, how do you think about it? I guess I would put it a little differently. I think for one thing, Emily's point, the citizen concept goes back to Rome and the Roman Republic. And it was certainly very central to the American founding. I guess it has been a contemporary issue. Well, sure. I mean, French Revolution is a strange place to go as the start. You're right, they called each other citizens. But I think also this captures a way in which the French Revolution was obviously less successful, I think most people would say. And how you're describing it is kind of just a fundamental claim of equality of things that the people owe to the state. I think this is what's most important about citizenship, which is that it's a reciprocal obligation among the people. And that goes back, again, to this notion of what is a republic. Right? The one thing that's so unique about the United States is that it's really this nation that was brought into being by the sheer will of citizens who wanted to create this thing to serve them. And I think if you go back and you look historically really up to very close in the 20th century, certainly, you know, in the US, there was very much an understanding of citizenship. You know, again, it has its legal meaning, who can live where. But citizenship really meant something much broader, meant full participation in communal life, in economic life, in national life. It meant a sense of solidarity. It meant, you know, ultimately that you also had this connection between generations, that you were inheriting something from the people who had invested to give it to you, that you, in turn, had an obligation to invest and give it to the next generation. And it seems to me that and what we're really focused on American compass is that that's just fundamental to human flourishing, to a well functioning society. And I think it's something that we've lost. And, you know, we obviously do a lot of work on economic policy. I think in terms of what do policymakers need to do? Better economic policy is a huge piece of it. But the reality is that you also need a political culture that's going to be able to make those kinds of changes. You need people who are bought into the system. This thing we spoke about a lot with Secretary Besant last night that especially when you talk to young people, you know, the problem isn't that they don't have enough stuff, right? Like that we have more material abundance than ever, I think. But they're very well founded frustration is that it's not clear what any of it's for. And so when we think about reclaiming American citizenship and the reclaiming is very important, because I think there really is something that was sort of stripped away that over really the past generation, we've degraded that kind of relationship into something that is just more, you know, you are a consumer, not an actual productive participant, necessarily in the economy. You know, you are sort of this individual with radical autonomy to invent your own truth, not somebody who is a member of a community and lives within those obligations. And at the national level, to some extent, even, you know, outright shame or disdain for what is an incredible heritage that we have inherited and should be trying to carry forward. And so I think, you know, in substantive terms, I mean, there's a lot of policy that can that has caused some of these problems that could address some of them. But also just as a matter of how we approach our politics, I think, you know, what is really missing out there right now is an aspirational positive vision that's not, you know, the traditional right of center message has just been like, well, we'll just get government out of the way and everyone will flourish. That that's obviously not sufficient. You know, the message from the left of center tends to be more, you know, we'll hear the things that are lacking that we will therefore give you. I don't think that's sufficient either. And so we're trying to to figure out, you know, what is a message that we'll actually acknowledge and speak to the very real problems, but in a way that actually reclaims some of what we've lost. Well, and the the Delaney protests remind me of a distinction that I think has been raised, whether it was in Minneapolis or elsewhere. And I actually don't mean this in the context of Delaney, because I believe people in our detention should be treated humanely, of course. But there has been a blurring of the distinction between resident and citizen. That's been very interesting. And sometimes it seems as though, yes, we should be affording certain rights to people who are in detention, people who are here on green cards, visas and the like, especially if we said we were going to. But also there is a distinction between somebody who is living here in the United States legally or in some cases illegally and a citizen. And I think the meaning of citizen is why. I mean, the degraded meaning of citizen is probably why that distinction has been blurred. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. No, I think it's a great point. I think so much of what we're seeing in our struggles with illegal immigration now are really way downstream of, OK, but what is citizenship in the first place? Because I don't think it would be controversial to say on the left of center there has been much more a view that anybody has a right to come here. And the reality is that for citizenship to work, for that sense of solidarity to exist, it's actually incredibly important, both in theory and in practice, that the people who are the citizens of the nation have the right to decide who becomes a citizen. If you're telling me I'm supposed to have some relationship to the other people, but also I have no say in who those people are going to be, that breaks down very quickly. And so that's not necessarily an argument for or against any level of immigration, right? You could have a very well functioning system that has many immigrants coming in, but it needs to be happening in a way that citizens who already here feel like and in fact do have control over. And then it has to be happening in a way that actually imposes obligations on those people as well. That says, if you if you want to come and be a part of this community, you know, it is not simply having that piece of paper. There are obviously enormous benefits and privileges that come with being here with being a citizen. And that also then comes with obligations that we have to be willing to uphold. And so when I see, you know, the Hassan Piker protested, to me, it's just a perfect illustration of, you know, look, if the approach you're going to have is, well, all of these people are sort of, you know, entitled to their freedom, I think it's safe to say also, you know, anybody who's concerned whether they can speak English, anyone who's willing to embrace and share a culture, that these are somehow, you know, racist or uncouth things to demand. These are actually the core things to demand. And one thing we really want to focus on is like, and by the way, even if you are sort of a, you know, more to the left of center, you want a much larger and more generous welfare state, you should almost be more concerned about demanding those things. I mean, it makes some sense. The libertarians are crazy, but they have an internal coherence, right? Libertarians will say like, we want to open borders and we want no welfare state that provides anything to anybody. Like, well, that's a terrible idea. But like, that sounds awful. But also like, at least like you're putting your money where your mouth is sort of. And I think what's been a huge problem for the left of center is to say, no, no, we are going to uphold all of these things that we must give to everybody. But we absolutely reject this idea that we are going to, you know, impose anything that's going to maintain the kind of solidarity and bonds of genuine citizenship. And that's where then in turn, you just see trust start to break down. You see both at the community level, trust in the government, you see people feel like, why am I even paying taxes? What is this going to? I, and Real Grand Valley, Hispanics voting for Trump. And then you see, it is a really important point that a lot of, you know, people who have immigrated this country and have become citizens the right way are often those who get this more than anybody and are especially frustrated by people who are not doing those things. And so, you know, I think it's, it's really important to think about this as, as really at the root of a lot of the problems we're having here, but also to divorce it from what has been the fight about immigration for so long, which is like, well, either your pro immigration, and that is the sort of humane, we care about every rights or your anti immigration, and that's somehow xenophobic or racist or whatever else, either your pro, a good concept of citizenship, which can absolutely incorporate immigration, but doesn't in a way that's going to work, or you're against that and you're, you're ending up where we are today, which is a giant mess. One kind of adjacent disagreement I would, I would have with you guys is talking about that, that we would treat citizens and non-citizens differently. I think it's a kind of a fundamental American thing that the Constitution says, you know, all people who are here, however they're here, even murderers in prison, like have the Bill of Rights applies to them or Constitution applies to them. I just mean like non-citizens voting in DC elections, something like that. Right, right. And yes, and we could, that's an interesting one too, because like if you live there and you have a stake, you want people to have a stake in the society, but I feel like, and often when I'm reading American Compass stuff, I'm like, how is this right wing? I agree with all of this stuff for the most part. You also sound like the libertarians who are, or in critics. Yeah, there you go. But so I do feel like there is a, a compromise that kind of reinvigorates the kind of Bernie Sanders kind of AFL-CIO mid-2000s kind of position. And one, one place I disagree, somewhat disagree, and maybe I'm wrong, but it particularly during the Biden administration, and there's a, there's a belief on the right that the Biden administration deliberately unleashed and pulled in a massive wave of migrants because they wanted to destroy the country and that they thought these people are going to then become Democratic voters and they're going to lock down the country forever. Like I think that is a genuinely held view among a lot of people on the right, which I just think is incorrect. And to, to your point, like analytically, like a lot of people who come in and are immigrants and become citizens, they vote for Republicans. Like they're interested, like even from, even on its own terms, like this idea that millions of people coming in is automatically, and also they can't vote. And let's say, okay, their kids are going to vote, and let's say it's Chuck Schumer's like 20-year plan. Like it's not, there's no guarantee that they're going to be Democrats. So if you're going to cheat to like, you know, take over the country, this would be the craziest way to go about doing it. I think what, what actually happened is that, you know, Trump did slow immigration significantly in his first term and then COVID shut it down completely in like March of 2000. And it, and, and you had... Well, border crossings were going up. There were caravans that were sending a lot of migrants. Border crossings were growing up. I don't know about the net, but... Yeah, I mean, the problem... And then you had, and then you had the economic collapse of Venezuela and Cuba, and you had this mass push to the border. And then, then it pours over. But my point is, I, whether, however you feel about that, I think it's crazy to think it was a giant conspiracy. I think it happened. And they, like, I, because I knew people involved with, they like, they were just overwhelmed of what was going on and, and wasn't something, and they were trying to just deal with it. Regardless of that, I feel like Democrats overall, maybe not the activist groups, but Democrats overall are at a place where they're like, okay, you know what, we were wrong about that. Like, that was bad policy. It didn't help the migrants. It didn't help workers. It didn't help anybody. And it hurt us politically. And so, fine. You know, we need a stronger border. But we're not going to do that again. At the same time, what's happening in Delaney Hall and at these ice attention facilities across the country, and, you know, thankfully, they're not sending ice as viciously through places like Minneapolis as, as they were before. But that, that kind of thing where you're, or where you're a wreck, you're a resting area. I jump in here because I really disagree with a few elements of this. First of all, the idea, I think you're right that it can be overwritten as a sort of elaborate multi-decade conspiracy theory. It is unquestionably the case that the Biden administration could have controlled immigration and chose not to. And the way that we know that is because six months before the election, when they realized they were going to get crushed, they did do something about, they did. So this was a choice by the Biden administration. And it was a disastrously bad one. The second thing that I think it's very important to say about now the challenges that we're having in enforcing the law is that this is the inevitable downstream consequence of what the Biden administration did. You cannot say we are going to lawlessly allow millions of people into the country. And then when the voters, as you said, even the Democratic Party is ready to admit, wow, that wasn't a really good idea, say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we can't believe now it's hard to actually enforce law and do something about it. And I don't know about the details in the cleaning hall. I think to your point, humane detention and so forth is critical. But I also really take issue with this idea that, oh, well, ICE is viciously going into Minneapolis because here's the thing. Most ICE activity and detentions and deportations are happening in states we don't hear anything about. Why is that? Well, because they're going to UVSA appointments or... No, because they're doing it in states where the governments in the states and the cities agree to work with ICE and enforce the law. Maybe like New Orleans or Memphis. In Texas, what you are seeing in a conflict in place like Minneapolis is a sanctuary city. You're seeing a city that is saying we refuse to support the enforcement of the law. And in fact, we're going to obstruct it in all sorts of ways. And in that context, yes, it's going to be very messy. And so to your point, oh, well, Democrats understand this now, sanctuary cities is question number one. When I see the sanctuary cities reversing those policies, I'll believe you that, in fact, we're ready to get serious about this. And if I don't see that, and I think the American people don't see that, it's going to be very hard to take seriously this idea, like, no, no, we want to just do this the right way we want to do this humanely. Unfortunately, it looks like you don't want to enforce the law at all. And that's a huge challenge. Yeah. So I guess the point is that like, if we're really going to take this idea of citizenship seriously, and if we're all citizens first, then it has to get beyond this left versus right Democrat versus Republican. I think somebody like Stephen Miller, who even Trump has said, you know, if you had your way, there'd be 100 million people here, and they'd all look like you. And that is then expressed as policy, where he's, you know, mandating these, you know, 3000, 4000, whatever it is a day, and it's, and it's producing. You mean deportations? Right, 3000. Yeah. Now, do you remember how many people were coming across the border? I mean, it's a little lot. It was a lot. It was right. Right. So at what rate would you like to deport the millions and millions of people that we agree the Biden administration shows? So I think this would be the interesting place where if we're serious about this is a compromise, I think it would look something like violent criminals and let it, but as citizens come together and say, look, we're going to focus on deporting violent criminals. That's the first thing we can all agree on this. So we're going to focus on that as citizens of this country, people who are following the law, and we're going to, and we're going to close the border in a serious way as you guys want, and people who are following the law and who love our country and are here for the right reasons, we're going to find a pathway to make them citizens. If we can't come to that kind of agreement, then we'll just do every two years war back and forth. So I just want to point out the irony here is you were telling me there was no Biden conspiracy. These people aren't going to be able to vote anyway, but now the only acceptable compromise is no, no, with the exception of the violent criminals, they should all be given citizenship. So I, so I question that as the common sense compromise. Secondly, it seems to me there are some other things we could do here, for instance, workplace enforcement, right? If we just, right? Because in fact, every one of these people who are here illegally and working, there is a violation of the law there as well. And so, you know, that's one place I think, you know, or public parties overwhelmingly in favor of mandatory verify. I think that's a great place. We could be taking much firmer action. Well, I'm curious to actually hear some contrast between both of you on the labor question. You know, on the, and on, yes, on the citizen question, let's say you're really worried that these people are going to vote for Democrats. I think it's, I think it's overblown. But you could say, okay, here's the pathway to citizenship is here's a legal work requirement. You have to work for, you can work for 12 years, but that's compliant with E verify that this, that it's not a second class kind of workforce that is working in the shadows. A fake social security. Right. So the, the, the, the law. So, and then they be, but they are citizens or they can't. After say 12 years. Okay. Let's roll this clip of Scott Besant. And I'll get your take on this, Orrin, because you interviewed him last night, but Scott Besant gave what he's, what a lot of people are reacting to as a major economic speech at the Reagan Library last week. And he was talking about economic security as national security and how we've kind of, the way he sees it, that we've sort of divorced these two things when they should always be thought of together. And citizenship and labor are obviously a huge component of this. So let's roll the clip. While America slept, our vulnerabilities grew, but under President Trump's leadership, we are alert to the risk we can no longer ignore and attuned to the responsibility we can no longer defer. Under President Trump, we have awoken to mourning again in America and our best days, I believe, still lie ahead. So not to interrupt the conversation you were having, but to continue it, Ryan, you would say our birth rate is a serious problem. You would say, and, and, Orrin, you would probably agree with Ryan on that. You would say, also, that we need people to work more of these jobs. We have a huge chunk of actually working age men, 10% of working age men outside of the labor force, but also, you know, it's hard to fill some of these jobs. So, Orrin, if we're bringing manufacturing back to the United States, first of all, are we? The second of all, is that going to, do we have workers for that if we're also engaged in mass deportations? Well, so I think we certainly are bringing manufacturing back. Wall Street Journal's Greg Yip has been calling it a stealth manufacturing boom, because the reality is step one is you actually have to build new factories, right? You're not going to see the actual hiring for some time, but, you know, to your point, we certainly have plenty of people outside the labor force. We have plenty of people in much lower productivity jobs that might be well served by jobs in the manufacturing sector. We also have a lot of technological change happening that people think of going to vastly increase productivity. If anything, they're concerned that, you know, we won't have enough work for everybody. And so, you know, I think both on this question of sort of immigration force, then on this question of the labor market and reshoring, it again, all comes back to this idea for me of the first question here is, is what sort of nation do we want to be? And, you know, what sort of model do we want to go forward on? And then questions of economic policy, questions of how much growth are you getting, these questions, you then decide those within the confines of the kind of country that you want to be. And so, you know, the phrase jobs Americans won't do, I think is a quintessential example of the problem here. The idea that we're going to have a whole class of jobs in our economy that the people who live here won't do is sort of simultaneously demeaning to the people who absolutely will work if there are jobs with good conditions that pay a living wage. And it's ridiculous to suggest that employers and business models should be operating in ways that create jobs that don't meet those conditions. So, I think, you know, we really have to focus on is saying, there need to be some constraints here. Citizenship, in one respects, is a constraint. We have the citizens of this country for whom the market operates, right? It is not the point, it's not for citizens to serve the market. The point is for the market to be serving citizens. And so, how do we change policies to actually generate those kinds of results? Some of the things we're doing with trade and industrial policy is a way to drive more investment, you know, get more of a focus on creating these kinds of jobs. I think an element of the immigration policy definitely has to be, okay, you know, what is the premise of immigration policy? If the premise is, well, we just need to add people to do jobs, that I think very much demeans the notion of citizenship as a community and a nation first and foremost. And so, you know, I actually appreciated, you know, Ryan, you mentioned sort of the Bernie Sanders AFL-CIO view of the, you know, maybe mid-2000s on something like immigration. Teamsters sponsored the Galilestine. Teamsters sponsored the Galilestine. Teamsters, I think, you know, are much less beholden to some of the more left-wing activist groups at this point. The reality is that the AFL-CIO no longer has the AFL-CIO position. Bernie Sanders no longer has the Bernie Sanders position. And so, I think you're absolutely right that there is a point of view on what immigration should look like that Democrats, did hold, and Republicans historically held, right? It did not used to be nearly as contentious an issue. And the reality, I think, is the Financial Times had some wonderful charts on this a year or two ago where they showed, you know, with various measures, you know, what was the Republican-independent Democrat or conservative moderate liberal perspective on immigration. And what showed was the right of center and center's view just sort of proceeding without any real change. And the left of center view veering way off. And, you know, like you say, and the left center view was right to do that. They should be pulling everyone over. But as a descriptive matter, the divisiveness of this issue, the shift in how we talk and argue about it, and ultimately are, I would say, sort of loss of that concept of citizenship to the extent we're in the immigration context, that veer on the left is the thing that is causing the change. And I think we really have to grapple with. But then I would just say that also that, you know, immigration is one obviously very relevant piece of the citizenship conversation. But it's certainly not all or even most of it, right? I mean, even if you completely fixed all of our immigration problems, we would still have this broader breakdown in communal life, in economic life, in national life. And so, you know, it's unfortunate in some respects to the extent that because of the direction of immigration has gone, it has become as central a focus as it is. But moving beyond that really requires not just making sure we have a stable, insane immigration system. You know, it just as much requires thinking about what is the pathway for a young person into adulthood, right? You know, the way that we did sort of college for all, I think it's been a disaster. We've sort of said either you're somebody who's going to go to college to succeed there and head off in life, or we just kind of have nothing for you. And so, you know, how do we think about the role of education? How do we think about transitioning into adulthood? All of that is it's a big piece of discussion, I think, you know, place and just caring about it, not saying, well, everyone can move to opportunity. And frankly, we're going to strip mine, all the most talented people out of a lot of communities. So, saying that places is the most important thing in a lot of ways in a lot of people's lives. And so, how do we make sure, you know, the economic growth and opportunity, the vitality of communities is getting out to everywhere, instead of saying, well, here are the enclaves you can come to if you want it. Those are the kinds of things we're really going to have to address and prioritize over the next quarter's GDP number. Well, what I mean, one thing that keeps people in places is you got to have a hospital, you got to have a hospital, you got to have a rural hospital, you got to and you it helps if you have a college or a university, even a small one, that just statistically like that's going to keep people who. Yeah, so I totally agree with that. The problem is what's special about those two things? It's that they attract massive amounts of government spending. In other words, Well, the hospital hell. No, no, but if, They're important in its own right as well. That's absolutely true, but economically what's going on here is that as you've, it used to be, well, of course you'd have a hospital there, because if you have a vibrant community and people who are doing well and prospering, you would want to have a hospital there. Oh, you're saying it would follow the, Right. You didn't use to have to worry about, wait a minute, why, how do we get healthcare to this place? Because if it was a vibrant place of, of course. Well, you used to just have a country doctor that likes them. And at some point, you know, that's right, our healthcare system has obviously evolved and, you know, in rural communities, you also just have a scale problem. But the extent to which we now think, oh, well, in a lot of places you have to have a hospital and you have to have a college is because those are the two things that you can put there that simply by enrolling people or admitting people entitle you to massive amounts of federal money. Right. And like land grant universities being a critical link. Well, once upon a time, it was land grant universities. Now it's just anybody whose students are eligible for financial aid and student loans, many of which will never even be paid back. But that's a vicious cycle because you were saying people can't exist in some of these areas without the federal spending at the rural hospital now because they don't have private sector insurance. They're the big factory that employed people. It's gone. And so they're, it's basically we're in a vicious cycle kind of is how I've seen what both of you're saying. It's very hard to attract companies to move to an area if there's no, if there's no hospital. And a university helps too. Yeah, I think certainly. And, you know, one thing with respect to the university that's very important is we concentrate all of our federal research spending for, for leading edge research in a very few places. There's no reason we have to do that, especially in the sort of with modern communication and so forth. It's not like you need all the best scientists of every kind living in Cambridge, Massachusetts or, you know, Palo Alto, California or even New York City. There's no reason you can't take that sort of funding and direct it more towards having great labs in every state university around the country and start pushing things back out that way. The reason I just emphasized the sort of public spending of, of eds and meds as they call it is, is just to say, you know, the reason that's how the landscape looks today is because we've hollowed out the rest of it so completely. And you're right, given that the vicious cycle that we're in, bootstrapping it the other way requires a lot of attention to these things. But I think it's very important that the aspiration not be, well, as long as we have enough funding for healthcare and higher education, all of these places can survive. But rather to say, no, no, the long term goal has to be that these are productive, flourishing places that can also support a healthy hospital system that wants to have a college and so forth. But that first and foremost is, is, is a viable community. I would just finish with one practical and pragmatic point that if we want to get to a place where as American citizens, we're actually discussing among ourselves how we're going to solve some of these problems, because I agree with you, it's not sufficient to get to, to embed meaning and citizenship to do, to deal with immigration, but it is necessary to deal with first. I would just say for them to the millions of people that like came across during the Biden administration, like their policy or don't like the policy, it was the policy that was in place and they, and they actually did follow the rules of this policy that was in place. If, if there's insistence that it has to be a Stephen Miller approach where, you know, mandatory detention is required for people who haven't committed any crimes, like not even, not even bail while they're like contesting that these asylum claims or anything else are just locked in these detention facilities and they're getting scooped up off the street, if that's going to be the way that Republicans, when they're in power insist on dealing with immigration, then Democrats are never going to come around on the other parts of it. They're never going to say, okay, wrong on this, wrong on this, let's, let's, let's do, let's do a comprehensive type of reform that gets us to a place where we can have a rational policy. That's just my, my guess. This is not very hopeful. Is that if, that Republicans have to say, okay, let's focus on violent criminals then. Let's focus on, but they have, Republicans have their own agency, if they just want to like, well, look, this is why I say there, there are different ways to enforce, and this is why I think the workplace enforcement is, is a much better test because I agree with you. You know, one thing we've found in certainly it shows in the polling data we've had, you know, folks were, had folks who are, for people writing for commonplace about this, that that's right. The most sort of confrontational, aggressive approach to enforcement is not popular with a lot of people. Workplace enforcement saying, if you're not here legally, if you are not allowed to work here, you in fact can't work here. That has an, an extraordinarily powerful effect. Again, not in overnight detaining people and destroying their lives necessarily, but in creating a very strong pressure for people to depart in an orderly way. And so I think it's a very helpful litmus test. Is your objection to the way they're doing it? Or is your objection to the notion that these people really do need to leave? And if it's, if it's just, you know, we would like to do this in a humane way, workforce enforcement offers that. And so I think that's where you see a lot of folks. I think Miller's approach requires the inhumanity. Like that's, and, and, and I understand that criticism. It's part of the policy to scare people. Trump is doing today. I think the flip side of your point about what Democrats will accept is, well, if Democrats won't even accept workforce enforcement, if we can't actually get to a place where everybody agrees. I think they would as long as there's a path for people who came here through the process to get a work permit, then I think they'd be fine with that. This is exactly what I'm telling you. This is the actual question. Is the people, is the millions and millions of people who came in here who in frankly a very lawless way during the Biden administration is the end point? Not just Biden administration. You're right. And even before one of my, one of my good friends from growing up as a contractor, and he's like, give me a union hall where I can go and hire legal people. And I'm happy to do that. Love to pay the wages, whatever. I don't care. You, you as in the broad, you are our government, our, our society have built a system where that is not possible. So then you go in and then you take all these workers and then deport them without there being another option. Well, let's be clear. So is completely insane. I agree with this. This is an apolitical guy who's like, what, like my framers deport us. This is just, I think this is an instance where this connects really to this richer sense of citizenship, which is one of the reasons you as a contractor can't go do that. Because if you do, you'll just lose out to the people who are doing the other thing. And so it's fine to say like, the union hall doesn't exist. Right. But one reason the union hall doesn't exist is because who would go hire from the union hall if there's a massive exploitable population of undocumented immigrants to hire instead. And so it is a, it is a prerequisite, again, to having the kind of economic life we want that does give workers power, that does create that opportunity. Let me just finish the point. Yeah. It's a fantasy to have an economic life where we enforce labor law, have a tight labor market and have good jobs for Americans. It is a fantasy that you're going to be able to grab 20 million people. Well, you just used grab again. Why can't I just enforce workforce law? Why can't I just enforce the law on the books against employers who employ people illegally? Well, you're still going to have to grab people. No, I'm not. Or myself. I'm going to find employers and perhaps even arrest some employers if they continue to employ people. My point is you have to also support the other side. Like you have to. But you haven't told me why that's a fantasy. Why can't I just require that employers follow the law? Because all of the housing construction will stop. So now we're back to jobs Americans won't do. And that's just not the way to get citizenship. Or at least there'll be a temporary pause. I'm just saying practically speaking. I'm not saying virtuous or not virtuous. It's just practically speaking and then politically you lose. So there has to be some mechanism for people to hire people legally. I would say give people who are here who are following the law work permits. Why is that? What's wrong with that? Well, for one thing, because they are not currently here legally and we should have been enforcing the law long and we can do that now. For a second thing because the exact workers they're competing with built the wrong system. Nobody else coming in. But the people here now we're going to give them work permits and anybody who hires somebody illegally, like you're getting significant consequences. Yeah, well because a lot of the problem is that the exact class of people who these workers are competing with are the ones who have seen a very weak job market for a very long time in part because of this competition. And we should be trying to tighten that job market aggressively. People in the upper half of the income distribution, people with college degrees and this is again where we've had this divergence in society take for granted that this stuff is all fine. We should want the same kind of experience in the job market for the construction worker that you or I get to experience. And that requires a much tighter job market than we have had. And so to some extent I guess I even question your premise that housing construction come to a stop. I think one thing we can do if you want to say we need a transition period, we need to phase this out over a few years, that's fine. But the end point should be essentially where we started here which is that citizenship is about the American citizens, that is who this republic exists for, that is who formed the republic. And the question is what is the set of policies that's going to serve them best. That's my point. You got to transition to it and what we're doing now isn't actually going to transition to that, I don't think. We'll probably have to leave it there. But thank you so much, Oren Kass, American Compass. That was a really interesting conversation. We appreciate it. Folks can check out the new project in commonplace on the Compass website. Thanks Oren. Thank you guys. Well that does it for us on today's edition of Breaking Points. We apologize, the show is going to hit premium subs inboxes a little bit late because we had such a great conversation with Oren Kass. Our producers were like, wrap, wrap. But we wanted to just, no I thought it was great. I didn't want to disrupt the flow of that. It's definitely me. But thank you everyone so much for joining us today. We appreciate it and we, Ryan and I will be back Friday with I think Crystal and Griffin. All right, see you then. This is an I Heart podcast. Guaranteed human.