Anti-ICE Democrats Are Getting People Killed!

Democrat politicians across the country have been engaged in this utterly reckless and irresponsible rhetoric, demonizing ICE. They are right back to the worst of their defund the police days. Gavin Newsom, Tim Walz, of course they didn't pull the trigger to kill these people, but they may as well have done, they may as well have done it directly themselves. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Steve Hilton Show. It's a really great, positive, exciting show today because we've got a big focus on one of the big stories that has been really dominating the news for months now, which is fraud in government, fraud, waste and abuse, corruption, all of those things. And I'm taping this on Monday morning, January the 26th, and it's the day that I'm announcing plans for Cal Doge, Department of Government Efficiency, as it's become well known. We're going to do that in California. We've got a fantastic team to actually run that operation. We're doing the work. We're not waiting till I'm elected governor. We're doing it right now. It's starting today. And we're going to introduce you to some of the people who are going to be leading that effort. And a great conversation with our friend Jen Horne, who's got some fantastic fraud stories right now, especially from the California Post, which is launching today as well. So there's a lot of energy and excitement around the place this week, which I'm thrilled to be part of. But I do want to start, of course, with the other big story that's dominating everything, which is this absolutely shameful situation that we're seeing in Minnesota, specifically Minneapolis. Erupted again over the weekend with the shooting of one of the protesters there. I actually don't want to get into the details of that. That's not my job. People are analyzing the video and I've, you know, looked at it, but I haven't spent a huge amount of time on it. I've been focused on getting ready for our announcement today, the Caldoge announcement. But I want to talk about this issue of immigration enforcement very much because, of course, it is relevant in California as it is across the country, because California has the largest number of immigrants. You've got a huge proportion of illegal immigrants in California. It's a massive issue. And this whole question of immigration enforcement, we need to be honest about it. And so you can get into the details of, now we've had two people killed now in Minneapolis in connection with immigration enforcement. And everyone wants to get into the finger pointing and the blame. And is it the ICE officers? No, I'll tell you who's responsible for the situation and who is therefore responsible for the fact that people are losing their lives and getting injured and the scenes of lawlessness and crime and chaos. It's very clear who's responsible. In Minnesota, it's Tim Walz and that idiot mayor they have there who have been encouraging people, telling people to go out and interfere with law enforcement, with federal law enforcement. They are the ones whipping up this climate of fear and hatred and division with their inflammatory rhetoric and their actions in their actions in terms of withdrawing police support for law enforcement and refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. That's what's happening in Minnesota, and that's what's ended up with people losing their lives. And of course, it's not just Tim Walz and the mayor of Minneapolis. It's Democrat politicians across the country who, almost from day one of the Trump administration, have been engaged in this utterly reckless and irresponsible rhetoric, demonizing ICE. They are right back to the worst of their defund the police days. this far-left ideology that is so implacably hostile to law enforcement. And that's what ICE is. It's law enforcement. It is enforcing federal law, immigration law. And further, you could say, especially to the Democrats who are doing this, what about all their endless lectures about protecting our democracy and how we mustn't undermine our democracy and stand up for democracy? On and on they go about democracy. What is this? If not defending and standing up for democracy, what immigration enforcement is doing. There was an election in 2024, a federal election. There are elections all over the country, but there's an election for president. And it's very clear in our constitution. Again, these Democrats endlessly going on about the constitution and the rule of law and whatever. Immigration is a federal matter. The enforcement of immigration laws are set in the Congress and the laws are enforced by the federal government. the executive branch. That's where immigration sits. There was an election in 2024. Republicans won the White House. Republicans won the Congress. And the laws haven't changed on immigration. And the enforcement of immigration law is exactly as was promised in the election campaign, when Donald Trump as a candidate made it absolutely clear where he would be as president for the second time around on the enforcement of immigration law. There was no doubt about it. Could he have been any clearer? The largest deportation program in history. Now, you may not have agreed with it, and you may quibble with it. Well, it should just be the criminals. That's what he said over and over and over again. There was no doubt about it. It was in all the rallies. It's all the speeches. It's incredibly clear. And America voted for that. And now it's being implemented and the democrats don't like it they're trying to undermine it not just trying to undermine it with their words but with actually you know telling people to go out onto the streets to protest to inhibit impede stop the enforcement of the law they are right back to the defund days defund the police democrats this is exactly the same and they are putting people's lives at risk gavin newsom one of the worst offenders whipping up this hatred of ice demonizing ice demonizing law enforcement, telling people to go out onto the streets to put their lives at risk. Human shields for his political ambition. People are dying because Gavin Newsom wants to puff up his own political position. It is disgusting what these Democrats are doing. Of course, Gavin Newsom, Tim Walz, Hakeem Jeffries, of course they didn't pull the trigger and kill these people, but they may as well have done it directly themselves, these Democrat politicians. It is absolutely disgusting. So let's turn to what I would do as governor of California, because you could be sure that this is going to be a big issue. And it already has been. I'm in Los Angeles today, right at the heart, very close, actually, to where the riots were, which I covered. And I was here last summer about ICE, the same kind of situation. Thankfully, no one was killed. It's going to be a huge issue in California. And that's why this weekend, I wanted to make my position clear and the position of the team that I will be leading as governor of California. Michael Gates, running for attorney general, you met him last week. He is part of our golden ticket. As attorney general, he and I put out a statement, making clear where we stand, that this entire insanity, the lawlessness, the chaos, the crime, the death, is as a result of this sanctuary madness, the sanctuary policies that are a total violation of federal law and should never exist. in the first place. We are not going to tolerate that. We will make sure in California, as governor and as attorney general, that local law enforcement works with federal law enforcement to enforce the law. That is going to happen. We are going to give guidance and clarity to district attorneys, sheriffs, police departments to make sure that happens. So we avoid all this because it is the law. We've got to get away from this growing sense pushed by Democrats. You can just pick and choose which laws you like and which laws are enforced. No, that is the recipe for anarchy and chaos. And that is what we're seeing on the streets of American cities right now. It's not going to happen in California, not on our watch. Michael Gates and I, as governor and attorney general, we will make sure that the laws are enforced, that the laws are peacefully enforced, the peaceful enforcement of all laws. That is our commitment. That is what will happen. And that change can't come soon enough. All right, Jen, Horn is with us. Apparently, you've got a bunch of fraud stories, which is perfect for the day that we are launching Cal Doge and talking all about that stuff. So what do you got? You have inspired me today, Steve, because of this whole effort to doge up California. You know, I'm right there beside you. And lo and behold, what did I bring with me today? I brought four stories of fraud. And and actually, I think one of them is maybe linked to Gavin Newsom's ridiculous performance at Davos last week. Maybe that's the place where we start, where he acknowledged on stage and we call him Sparkle Beach Ken now. Who knew? Sparkle Beach Ken on stage in Davos actually acknowledged that he was using federal money to provide health care for illegal immigrants. And so that's kind of your your countdown extra today. He's going to have to pay back the federal government. I had U.S. Attorney Bill Assaley on my radio program last week, and Bill Assaley on Friday said, oh no, we're already working on that remittance invoice to Gavin Newsom to pay back the federal government because that's not a lawful use of taxpayer dollars. So all of his huffing and puffing in Davos is going to lead to a big payback. And where is that money going to come from? He's going to try to get it from the taxpayers, I'm sure. All right, you ready for this? So this is LA City, and I had to get the wording on this right for you. So the city of Los Angeles has now steered over a million dollars. The total is $1.4 million in taxpayer funds to a social justice group that wants to abolish the LAPD, get rid of the Olympics in 2028, and they also want to end rent and mortgage payments in the city of Los Angeles, which, look, I have a mortgage payment. If they want to take that on, that's fine. I guess I could be a socialist then. But this group is called the Strategic Actions for a Just Economy. And it's not just an activist group. Now we're finding out that not only did this group sit on the steps of City Hall and try to influence our city's politicians, but Steve, they got this $1.4 million government contract for, are you ready for this? tenant education. Now, what does that mean? I guess maybe putting together some brochures to send to people about what they need to know being a tenant. But this is one of the, I know you're going to be talking about this. This is the best kept secret in California. And it's these NGOs who take money from the government. They are able to get these contracts and they are very lucrative and they create themselves a business where then they influence politicians and politicians receive donations from these groups and they go out there and also just ratchet up the chaos by going out and asking for the for the the end of the LAPD you're going to tell me that group deserves a government contract are we crazy it's absolutely unbelievable and this is the business model of the Democrat industrial complex in California. It's exactly, it's this swirling, swampy mess of non-profits, NGOs, the unions, taxpayer money, slouching it all. I mean, it's just absolutely outrageous. And that's what we got to put a stop to. Absolutely. And when people are looking at what's going on in Minneapolis, it's important to remember that what started all of that is the fraud. And the fraud in Minneapolis is nothing compared to the fraud that exists in California. And, you know, we can think about the total of the totality of the fraud, which is in the billions. I mean, I think you said it's close to 100 billion dollars in the work that you've done, but it's happening kind of in these small dollar amounts. I hate to say a million dollars is small, but by government standards, it is where this group is getting a million and a half dollars. Another group is getting a million and a half dollars. And what are we getting? Politicians that never leave office. We are getting unions that run the state and we're getting these NGOs that are paid to create chaos. It's it's absolutely a ridiculous thing. Nobody benefits under under this system except those who are in on it. Exactly. And we've got to track it properly. I mean, you know, just, you know, there's all these tips that we're running, running down and we've got to. That's the sort of structure and team we're putting in place with Cal Doge to do this. even before I'm elected governor, we're going to be doing the work. And just they keep coming in. I mean, another example that just came in just a couple of days ago was in Ventura County. And there you've got money going. So it's not just the state government and localists, all these bits of government. This is counties taking taxpayer money and giving it to far left Soros backed groups that are doing things like doxing ICE agents and pushing gender transition for kids. And with taxpayer money, it's absolutely outrageous. We're all familiar in L.A. County with the group that was giving out resource guides on how to attack ICE agents. I mean, these are the kinds of groups that are literally working as anarchists to disrupt the government, yet they don't have any bones about accepting government money. Now, one of our hidden little secret weapons around here is Bill Assaylee. He's only one guy, but he is the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, which means pretty much all of Southern California and even some of the Central Coast, covered by Bill Assaylee. And he just coordinated an arrest with the Department of Justice. On his first day in office, he promised he was going to go after the homeless industrial complex, which by and large is probably the place where most taxpayer dollars go to die. Not only did we have Gavin Newsom just admit to giving illegal immigrants health care, but a lot of groups have been given money by both the state and the local governments to solve homelessness, which, of course, has never been solved. If anything, it only gets worse. And so they just made an arrest and they are accusing a guy of another twenty three million dollars. Now, probably for homelessness, that number is closer to twenty four billion dollars. So, again, just the tip of the iceberg. but they arrested Alexander Suffer for stealing $23 million. They took his Range Rover. They took his LA mansion. All of these things purchased for him with taxpayer dollars. He was supposed to house and feed the homeless. And instead he just, I guess, housed and fed himself very well. I would actually blink at the number of people he was supposed to help. He was supposed to help 600 people get off the streets. Now, I think you and I could do that for a lot less than $23 million. So I think there's a problem right there. But the fact that he didn't even house one and was able to get himself a Range Rover and a mansion in Los Angeles and live a pretty good life. These are the stories that need attention in the mainstream in California, but the news media doesn't want to pick these up. Well, that's why it's so important that we've got the California Post launching. And your doge efforts, because at least it brings some attention to the game that has been played on us for such a long time. Exactly. All right. You ready for the next one? And this one involves your buddy, Gavin Newsom. This one great So you know Gavin Newsom loved to talk about the beautification of California which I remind you he was very good at beautifying San Francisco when President Xi came to town I bet you, dollars to donuts, they're going to be very good at beautifying Los Angeles when it's time for the Olympics and the World Cup. And then within seconds, everything is going to go back to the way it once was. Well, apparently Gavin Newsom has been, you know, bragging a little bit about this $23 billion project to beautify the city of Los Angeles. And he was talking about his graffiti proof paint. Is it fake? What is this? It was like a fake ivy. They called it graffiti proof ivy is what they called it. And apparently it takes about four seconds before you realize that this graffiti proof ivy is actually not graffiti proof at all. And so all of this stuff that he was actually bragging about has now been or is starting to be destroyed. And here's what's great. While I may complain that the mainstream news media does not ask enough questions or actually call out the governor when stuff like this happens, social media does. And that's what's beautiful about the social media platforms is that they'll see stuff like this and they'll actually go to town going, here's more taxpayer dollars wasted on beautifying. Instead of just saying we have zero tolerance for graffiti, you'll be arrested and put into jail if you are taken apart. I was just saying that last night, like because I'm in L.A. to do the launch of Caldoge. We're going to be doing it downtown. And we're standing outside the state controller's office in LA, which, of course, the state controller's office should be doing all this, but it isn't. And so, I mean, we're just driving in from the airport last night from Burbank and just right past where they were doing it. I saw the social media things about this, Ivy. That's exactly what I was saying to my colleagues in the car. It's like, it's very simple. Like, we've got cameras everywhere these days, right? If you do graffiti, we're going to find you and punish you. And you keep doing it until people get the message that it is not OK to do this. That is at the crux of every single one of these stories that we're talking about today. If you just allowed law enforcement to arrest people for camping on the streets, which is a law that's already on the books, the no camping policies, you wouldn't have to keep putting in millions and now billions of dollars in taxpayer money to solve this problem. It would be much better if you said to people, hey, you know what? We are not going to put up paint that sprays back at you. We're not going to put together these million dollar beautification programs. We are simply going to allow law enforcement to arrest people that are vandalizing businesses or graffitiing businesses. Those people are going to be arrested. When you actually allow law and order to do their job, Steve, we don't have to talk about this money. You wouldn't have to do the Doge effort in California anymore because there would just be law and order and people would actually follow those rules if they knew that there was a real punishment. But now there is nothing. And so people do whatever they want because there's no consequences. Well, that's why it's a very important part of the Doge story, actually, is the accountability, the legal and criminal accountability, which is why our launch today is going to be not just Herb Morgan, who's running with me on our golden ticket for state controller. He's going to be a central role in terms of the auditing function because the state controller can audit any organization receiving state money at whatever level, but also Michael Gates, who's running with me for attorney general, and we're going to be there together. And he's going to be making the argument that as attorney general of California, that's exactly what he will do. We will prosecute all of this. We will go after people who are stealing taxpayer money and make sure that there are consequences until it stops. You know, a lot of people say that the prosecutions have to happen at the very local levels, at the city and county levels, and that is true. But if you think about the lack of leadership that we have in Sacramento, the fact that our attorney general, the current attorney general right now, he himself is involved in an investigation over fraud and corruption. the fact that our governor, his chief of staff, is involved with fraud and corruption, the fact that we know he was traveling around Davos with Alex Soros, these guys are in it just so deep. Can you trust them to actually lead from the top? Think about it. With some good people who are in it for the right reasons, you could have someone like Michael actually say, you know what, attorneys general in these counties in Riverside and San Bernardino and Los Angeles County, we're freeing you up. Now we are going to encourage you for these prosecutions. We're going to take away all the silly stuff at the state level, the sanctuary policies. It starts at the top. When you have that leadership, you will have a stronger city and county and local government structure because you're going to have leadership and you're going to have people at the top who back the right thing and who actually back the well-being of the taxpayer. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. So I'm happy to see all that, especially from a fraud standpoint, because all of these programs and what we've learned is that, sadly, the Democrats who are in charge in the state, and I'm not saying it's all the Democrats at all. I think there are plenty of Democrats who are probably disenfranchised with their leadership, but the people who have just clutched on to power, they benefit from having problems, not solving them. And so we need a fresh class of people, a fresh group of people who are going to look at these things and say, we don't have to pay endless money in your tax dollars if we can actually solve these problems. And it can't be that hard. So that's what I'm looking about. Now, my last story today is a sad one, Steve. And I hate to disappoint you because you and I, I think we like a happy hour. Do we not like happy hour? Yes, exactly. We like happy hour, right? so i don't know if you saw this but the free booze program in san francisco has officially come to an end after five years where am i going to get my drinks now exactly they turned the city of san francisco into an embassy suites you know free happy hour for everybody uh according to uh the former leadership this was a program set up to help once again the homeless and the drug addicted, not go through withdrawals, not put a press on the city's health care system. So they were offering free booze to homeless people in San Francisco. Well, there seems to be an effort where they're actually trying to clean up San Francisco and good on them for this. And so the new mayor has said, you know, I said, you know what? Sorry, guys, but if you want booze, you're going to have to go to the liquor store like everybody else to buy it. So I will actually applaud this. I think we will cut down on some wasted taxpayer dollars in the city of San Francisco. I'm sad that happy hour is over, but I'm happy we no longer have to pay for it. We probably can just go along and get some here in L.A. from Karen Bass, I'm sure, Jen. Look, I'm going to tell you that it actually makes it a whole lot easier to watch Karen Bass perform. But, you know, I just can't I can't abide by the idea. Look, I'll pay for my drinks. You pay for your. We should all just go Dutch, I think, in California. You know, we'll all just pay for ourselves and not rely on taxpayers to buy us our martinis at happy hour time. I just think that's the right thing to do. Just in the last few minutes, Jen, I just wanted to, we were on the radio today, earlier, on this Monday, the 26th, and to mark National School Choice Week. And you've got a really, you're doing such a great job highlighting something very important. Let's just quickly talk about that as well for California. Tell us what you've been working on on that front. It's school choice week. And look, for a lot of people, obviously, I think if you are just paying attention, schools are not what they should be in California. We pay a lot of money per child to get an education in California, and that is suffering. We had Gavin Newsom just a few weeks ago crowing about how education is getting better, but still people are not leaving high school with grade level math skills. Seventy percent of kids are failing math when they leave our city, our excuse me, our state's high schools. Only 42 or 43 percent of them actually read at grade level. This is a serious, serious problem. I shared the story and Steve, you probably know this, that my mom was a public school teacher for 30 years with the LA Unified School District. she chose to send me to Catholic school, not just because it was exposure to religion, but because she knew I would get a better education. And my theory is that no matter where you are, where you live, what your income is in California, we all deserve to get our kids a great education. And one of the ways that we can do this is with school choice and the CEO Act, which is the Children's Education Opportunity Act, where you're literally given instead of your $17,000, or I think it's closer to 23 now, being put into the system on your behalf, you're actually able to hold that money yourself. And then you can decide, do you want to send your kid to the public school in your area? Do you want to send your kid to the public school in another area, a private school? Maybe you want a homeschool and you can use that money for the education that you're giving to your child. And that money follows the kid throughout their life. So if they have any leftover in their savings account, they can use that for a college, a trade school. they can actually use that money to help continue and further their education or they can leave that money for a sibling i just think this gives parents more control steve i am a huge huge proponent of this and i spoke to you about this earlier i think it's also going to be great for our public education because competition makes everything better if they have to compete for that money they're going to have to do better with your kids exactly i mean and and it's just the scale of their failure We just got to remind ourselves, and this is the point I made earlier, when you've got Newsom bragging about some fútling increase in scores. Now, instead of, I don't know, 41% failing, it's just 40% or something like that. You know, I can't remember. It's totally unacceptable and outrageous what he's talking about. And the comparison I made is with private schools. So let's say you've got money and you send your kids to private schools. 100% of the kids in those schools are expected to meet basic standards in math and English. 100 there's no tolerance of failure you're paying for it you get the results of course we're all paying for it as taxpayers so why should it be any different i mean it's just laughable if you're a parent and you've got you know you're looking for private schools and you might go and visit a few schools imagine if the head you know the principal sets down and they try to sell you their school we do really well here 75 of our kids meet basic standards in english you say what i'm out of here The expectation is 100%. And so why should that not be the expectation in the public school system? And you've got, and actually the really amazing thing when you cite that number, 22, 23 grand, the amount the state spends, a lot of private schools are less than that. That's right. The average, I believe, in LA is less than that. Of course, there are some outliers, very expensive private schools, and you see that. But the average is lower. It's actually less money is spent per student in most private schools or certainly the average is lower than in the public schools. There's no excuse for this. And that's why we've got to really attack the whole system. This government school monopoly run by the teacher unions who control the politicians and therefore they never held accountable. It's got to end. And so tell everyone what they have to do for this CEO act and what we need to know about that. Yeah, they need to scramble. You need to scramble right now. Actually, you can go to education opportunity dot org and you can download the petition. And by March 12th, I think he said you have to have they've got to have a million signatures in and they are behind. So if you can print out the petition and sign yourself, that's great. But even better, if you can take it to your church, to your kids' school, to your office, around your, maybe around your house, just to your family members that might be in your area, get as many signatures as you can. You can do it at educationopportunity.org. And this is a program that is, it's really well thought out and it doesn't punish anybody. It, at the end of the day, makes everybody compete and do a better job. And the only person that gets punished, I think, is the teachers union because they lose a little bit of power. And that's good for all of us. And they have to be because they are responsible and the politicians who enable them and they enable them because of corruption. It's the bribes. It's the donations. I mean, it's just disgusting. And we have to end it. All right. Thank you, Jen. Great to see you as always. You too. All right. Joining us now, two of the most important people who are going to be there making Cal Doge, the transformative force that it will be in our government. Jenny Rae LaRue and Paul Minor. All right, so as I mentioned at the top of the show, very, very big day, very exciting day, because we are announcing today, Monday, 26th of January, Cal Doge, the California Department of Government Efficiency. And it's not just something that I will be enacting as governor when we're elected along with the team on the golden ticket and we're announcing this thing together in LA. it's actually something we're going to start work on right now and it's another example of how I want to make sure that we are ready on day one to make the changes we need to save California and this is a really big one for me and in a way it's kind of the heart of of everything we need to fix I mean how many times you've heard me talk about how we've got this insane bloated nanny state bureaucratic welfare state government bureaucracy in California making it impossible to do anything to build anything, to run your business. You talk to business owners, it's this constant battle, you know, the taxes, the regulations, the fees, the permits. Then, of course, now we have the fraud coming to the fore. And Herb, Morgan and I, we've been highlighting that and we've been talking about that on this show. Our initial estimate, $250 billion of fraud. That's just the starting point. And so we start to get to the answer to this question, which is how is it that we pay the highest taxes in the country and get the worst results? what is going on what's going on are these two big things and just the headings for them as the fraud and under that of course you have different subsets of that um fraud and abuse and corruption and all those things we associate with that the kind of audit aspect of it where's our money going what's it being spent on wasted on corrupt um spending and and all of that that's one category, fraud. But the other category that's very important is the just bureaucracy of the government. These endless state agencies with their, you know, busy bodies bossing us around and then duplicating functions that are also happening in that way at the county level or region. You've got the CARB, the California Air Resource Board. You've got regional air quality. You've got counties doing it. You've got cities doing it. All this government, right? That's the second category and that's what i really want everyone to understand about my vision for the california department of government government efficiency cal doge is that it is both those things the fraud and the government bloat and that's what we're going to tackle and i'm thrilled to introduce the people who are going to do that for us today and there's there's a team already in place but at the head of the team is jenny larue and jenny ray larue and we're going to just um hear from you in a minute jenny about your background and how we connected and why this is so exciting and then heading up the government bloat government bloat hunter in chief let's call him that is paul eina uh who's just an amazing amazing person with a great track record both of you are so qualified for this it's really really exciting to me jenny you're going to be heading up the whole operation you're going to be the executive lead on caldoj both functions fraud and government bloat. So let's start with you. Tell everyone about your story and how you're fired up about this mission. Steve, thank you so much for having me. I started my career in business as an advisor to some of the largest businesses in the world at Bain & Company. And one of our jobs was to go in and identify things that they had become so accustomed to they were just the normal way of operation that were holding them back from thriving as businesses And that one of the fundamental reasons that I really excited about what we're doing at CalDoge is that we have the opportunity to take what is one of the largest functional organizations in the United States, the state of California, and to actually repurpose it to unleash growth again. And that's exactly what I did in the private sector. At 31, I bought my first business. And it was the same thing. You come in and you say, hey, you've been accustomed to doing things this way and it got you this far, but there are problems and you can't go where you need to go. So we're going to remake what we're doing. And that involves two things. It involves making sure that you spend money where you should spend it and you know exactly where it's going. And it also means that you have an organization that's set up for thriving over time. So I was thrilled when President Trump won the election and Doge was established. I actually went first into my own business that I'm currently operating and said, we're going to do a defend the spend meeting. Everybody comes in and I will cut every budget from you if you cannot tell me why you need the money and where exactly it is going. And so we did a reverse budget meeting instead of normally people would just say, hey, last year we had this and we need 10% more. We completely just burned it to the ground and started again. It was our most effective financial planning meeting we'd ever had in our organization to date. And then I started at the beginning of last year saying, I wonder if we could do the same thing for the state of California. So Steve, today really excited just to be a part of this as the director of the initiative. Just a couple of fun facts for everyone who's listening. the state of California has over 240 agencies. And we are the largest state in the nation. We have the largest economy in the nation. But we should not have the largest number of agencies in the nation. There is absolutely no reason why we need more than anyone else. This is not a prize that we want to win. And for example, the state of New York, which also has international borders, thriving financial sector, ports, and more, has 97 agencies. So we have so many agencies that have both authority for rulemaking, regulatory authority, and also fee-based authority, that they conflict with one another. And nobody can figure out who you're actually supposed to pay money to and who's actually supposed to approve your building permits. And that's why we have issues like the Pacific Palisades, where we have no houses being built, right? So I'm really excited to take on this initiative. It builds on the background that I've had. We have done some groundwork on this already, and there's certainly the right moment right now to attack what's happening with federal dollars and government bloat. And we're going to make the change that people are longing for in California, a bipartisan change. Fraud is uncool. Fraud is not cool for anyone and it's going to be really fun to root it out. So I'm looking forward to this initiative. So Jenny, just before we get to Paul, just tell me a little bit, tell everyone about what you had. You and I had a conversation which was so exciting to me that showed me, yeah, this is who we need for this job. You said that just on a voluntary basis, you've put together a team from your network of analysts. Just talk about that last year, actually already getting started down the road that we want to take Cal Doge. That was last year. Tell us about that. Totally. So this is not the first day of this initiative. We're in the middle of the process. And I believe that something should be top to bottom thorough. So I asked a group of analysts from my broader business community if they wanted to come on board and start to take a look at the spend, the government disbursements, the grants and funds that run through the California government. because functionally, California is actually not, it's not the legislative branch. It's not even the executive branch or the agencies. It's just a network of funding to a large number of NGOs, nonprofits, and contractors that support the state. And the hypothesis was there are all three of the bad guys. There's fraud, there's waste, and there's abuse. And it's not just a one-time thing. This is a culture that has been institutionalized inside the state of California. So with 30 people, we started to look agency by agency, expenditure by expenditure. And we will be releasing some of those early findings as we go through this process. And I'm really excited to do that. But we also have, I think, a renewed focus on federal fraud. And we can talk a little bit about that as well. Exactly. Well, that's what, you know, this is the moment because there's so much attention on it. And I just love the fact that you've already done some of this work and we're going to really pull it all together. And the other thing that's really important here for everyone to understand is my sort of sense of how this is going to work, which is that you've got this department we're announcing today. Obviously, everyone's a volunteer. We're not in the government yet. We haven't been elected. But no more new agencies, Steve. No more new agencies. Right. But but also in terms of the statewide elected positions, it's very important that I'm announcing this today, Monday, the 26th of January, alongside Gloria Romero, my lieutenant governor running mate, Herb Morgan running for state control, because, of course, the state controllers. In fact, we're doing it outside the state controller's office in Los Angeles because that should be doing this. That position has the right or the power to audit every organization receiving state money. But of course, it's not being used and hasn't been because the people in that position have been classic Democrat, time-serving machine politician hacks who don't care about it because they're part of the problem. But you're going to have Herb Morgan, who's running with me, my partner in all this. We've been working closely together. He's going to be there as state controller. And joining us today is Michael Gates, who's running for attorney general as part of our team. And then there you've got the commitment to hold people accountable, to prosecute people for the fraud. Because right now, all of that energy is coming from the federal level, especially U.S. Attorney Bill Asseli, our friend, who's doing a fantastic job exposing this. And you keep announcing charges against, particularly in L.A., the homeless industrial complex fraud that's going on. But why aren't the California officials doing any of this? Why is it the federal government? Because they don't care. Because we've got this one-party rule, and Gavin Newsom as governor, Rob Bontra as attorney general, the state control who no one's ever heard of, Malia Cohen, totally useless. They don't care. They're not interested because they don't have that attitude of, this is our money, and we've got to save it, and we've got to take the minimum we need from taxpayers and give them the maximum possible benefit in return. And the equation is exactly the other way around. So the fact that we're doing it both with the Cal-Doge team, the executive team, and the elected statewide officers who are going to kind of make sure that we push forward on that level, it shows I've got a really clear sense of how this is going to work. All right, long preamble to you, Paul Minor. I was so excited because during the week, you know, there's been a lot of emphasis on the fraud aspect of this. It's in the news, Minnesota, all that kind of stuff. And that word fraud is out there. But the government bloat aspect of it is just as important. Jenny outlined that very powerfully. And so I've been saying to myself, I need someone who's going to really lead on that, who really understands that in detail, the anatomy of the California state government and how we get to grips with it. And as I was asking around, that one name kept coming up, Paul Miner. You've got to talk to Paul Miner. And we did. And you're on board. And I'm absolutely thrilled. So tell everyone, Paul, your background and your connection to this whole issue. Great to be with you guys. Great to be part of the team. Let me start out before the background. I think we have to ask ourselves, how does this kind of fraud, you know, a quarter trillion dollars, maybe a fraud. How does that happen and who lets that happen? A lot of times, obviously, it's people committing to fraud. Those people should go to jail and whatever. But it really is a complacent bureaucracy. Go along, get along, do our thing. Some very well-meaning state workers, a great many of them that just want to do something well, but they're burdened down by this huge Titanic-sized bureaucracy that doesn't make any sense. and I worked for Governor Pete Wilson and Governor Schwarzenegger. We both tried different under them. We tried different avenues under Pete Wilson. We did regulatory reform, took our first swath. This is back in the 90s now. So even getting rid of 20,000 regulations was a big deal without technology. Fast forward to Governor Schwarzenegger, we created the California Performance Review, which did a top to bottom, side to side review. We took 275 civil servants, volunteered to leave their jobs to get reassigned to the CPR and spent six and a half months going through all their programs. And they were, Steve, I'm telling you, there were so many people that were like, why do we have three energy agencies? Why is the Energy Commission, the PNC and Cal ISO, all talking about the same things and why. And it's the inherent lack of accountability that you get when you have duplicative and unaccountable commissions and boards and a bunch of different departments and agencies that creates the problem, as Jenny Rae said, like in the Palisades, that just don't make sense because nobody could say, well, it's their fault. Gavin Newsom can say it's Karen Bass's fault. Karen Bass says, well, it's Donald Trump's fault. Donald Trump's like, what are you talking about? We did everything we're supposed to do. And then the citizens of California are left scratching their head and throwing their hands up and saying a pox on all their houses. When the three of us know that if we don't correct the bureaucracy, we don't make it more efficient so we can save to spend wisely on public safety, on roads, on grids to make California more efficient and therefore more economically viable for all Californians, then we haven't done what we need to do. Fraud, waste and abuse is so important to get those bad guys in jail and get our money back and prepare to make sure it doesn't happen again. But we can only do that when we reform the state of California executive branch. I couldn't be happier that you're both here and the other members of our team. I'll just quickly throw in my experience here and how I really know how important this is. because back in the day when I was in the UK government working as senior advisor to the prime minister, David Cameron, this was a big focus of what I tried to do. We knew going in, so he became prime minister 2010. And going into that, we knew this was a massive problem in England. The same kind of issues that you see in California, massive bloat, everyone bogged down, you can't build anything, can't do anything, can't run your business, nightmare, you know, regulations, by the way, also coming from the EU, which is why I was in favor of Brexit. that's another story but I got going there from on the 10 Downing Street you know with all the kind of authority of the prime minister we put together a team and we you know went through this and to start with it was interesting you kind of work with the different bureaucracies in the departments but it's so sprawling and huge and and in the end my conclusion was there's there's only one way to actually make this happen I remember I mean I don't tell the story but there's that you know we we're going through the um the regulations like let's try and cut the regulations and we we divided up the whole regulatory code until you know 28 component parts or whatever and i remember the very first meeting and i i put this this approach in place which was the was kind of reverse sun setting retrospective sun setting in a way where the idea was we assume that everything has to go instead of deciding which regulations we get rid of we'll just pick the ones we want to keep that was the kind of idea and so i remember the first meeting and it was the consumer protection branch of the department of whatever it was and then we all came in like all these people around the table and they did all the they had this paperwork you know these like hundreds you know massive book of things and we were going through and there was a color coding thing that said it was basically red and green and i can't remember which way around it was but i remember thinking oh most of them were what let's say most of them were red i said oh green great, so they're the ones that we're going to get rid of, right? I said, no, no, no, we have to do it. It was exactly the other way around. Most of them, they said we have to keep. So I just picked one around. I went to the middle of the book, picked one around, and I remember this so clearly. There was a meeting about 15 years ago. It was the regulation around men's pajamas. And I said, look, in all the set of regulations around there, why do we need this? And okay, the apparel person spoke up from the end of the table. Well, we have to have this. We had a 40 minute discussion on the regulation of pajamas, which concluded with this official, the civil servant saying, well, actually, I think you'll find that the public interest overwhelmingly dictates that we should be leveling up regulations because the regulation of female pajamas is at a lower level. And you just think, oh, my gosh, we're never going to get anywhere like this. And that's the moment I saw the bureaucrats always beat you at bureaucracy and process, you know, because that's what they know how to do in paperwork. The only way to actually make this change happen that we need is to just cut it all back, is to just close down the agencies that you're talking about, Jenny, is to just reduce the number. But that's the only way. And we need a roadmap to get there. And that's what you're going to do, Paul. Paul, I just want to go back to a couple of the things that you mentioned. And actually, just explain it a little bit more. You mentioned just the energy. Just go back to energy because it's a really good illustration of what we're talking about. Just go through those that you talked about, the PUC, the ISO. Just get into energy a little bit as an example. Correct. And this is a good example of how bureaucracies grow and continue to grow and just keep growing on top of each other. The PUC created through the Constitution, through reforms. What's that? The Pub Utilities Commission, which regulates the big energy producers, Cal Edison, PG&E, non-municipal municipalities like the locals. They're based in San Francisco in the Constitution because of railroad crimes, and they're a huge bureaucracy under themselves. Then the state decided to create the California Energy Commission with another standalone mandate to regulate other utilities, the local municipality utilities, who operate maybe in a smaller realm, but very much in the same way as the big ISOs. And then you have CalISO set up to regulate the grid and monitor flow of the electrons all around. They all have a component into what you and I do when we flick our switch and turn on our TV or computer. Yet they say they communicate very well, but they're overlapping. The bureaucracies are competing for resources. and truly you can't get a very simple holistic viewpoint. Regulators can't get a very simplistic viewpoint of what energy regulation should look like, not just for the companies they're regulating, but those people that actually pay the electric bills. What does it mean to make sense? I mean, sure, let's worry about our climate, but let's worry about our pocketbooks too. And what makes the most sense? And you add to that, you mentioned climate. I mean the reason that we I mean again what does this all look like to the consumer In the end the highest gas prices in the nation of all 50 states um and when it comes to electricity and the utilities the highest electric bills in america everywhere apart from hawaii and more than double the national average that's what it ends up being and i bring in you know you mentioned carbon i mean you can add to those energy regulators you've got carb the air resources board with a massive influence here And then, as I mentioned earlier, the regional air quality groups, boards, I don't know what they're called, you know, just endless acronyms. It's just a mess. And I just want to say another thing. So many examples of this. And also it's replicated at the county level. I just remember just things that stuck in my mind. I've been on the road, you know, talking to people all the time. You know, there was a lady who runs a pest control company. Nice, you know, small family business, just exactly the kind of business you want to support and see flourish. she's in the uh in the sierra foothills we met and she's told she told me she has to she was telling the story about the red she had to hire a whole person you know whose only job is compliance with all this regulation and they have to report what they use the chemicals and the different fine okay we want to make you know sure that we're using safe things or whatever um and she has to report to the state pesticide regulator and then the agriculture commission or whatever and at the each county's agriculture department and and she said it's a nightmare because they're all different some of them you have to send in paper some of them you can do online it's all different you know the way you have to do it i said oh what a nightmare that you have to do that every year i said no every month and you just multiply all this jenny your thoughts on that whole nightmare Well, I'll just say two things. First of all, we think that the problem are laws, but the biggest problem are these agencies, Steve, because they have essentially unlimited authority. And so if they want to create a new rule, if they want to create a fee, those are the real taxes and the real regulatory burden for everyone in California. And like we mentioned earlier, everyone feels it, but not everyone can see it. That's part of the job of Caldoge is to show you how what they're doing directly impacts what matters to you. How does it affect you at the pump? How does it affect the price of your home, the rent that you pay, and anything that you have to do inside your business? My husband and I own a small business, a winery in Northern California. We're regulated by 12 agencies. and and I mean it is a very small business it is overwhelming and these agencies don't even agree with one another about what the key issues are and so you know we're pretty savvy business owners we're we're able to navigate these things and of course now we're very involved with what's happening at the state level but just imagine somebody who is trying to find a new customer and instead they have to figure out paperwork and fee bases. And when we call some of these agencies, Steve, it is insane. We'll call them and we'll say, hey, we got a letter from you. And they'll say, we don't know what that was about. We can't figure it out either. They're making so many rules that they can't even keep track of them themselves. And so that really does keep supporting it. A lot of the work that we did last year in Caldoge found a number of these abandoned projects, which I would classify in the waste category. And I can actually bring one up for energy if we have time. Can I talk about one right now? Because we're starting to talk about that. One of the big things that you've talked about, Steve, throughout your campaign is the fact that our energy prices are just too dang high in California. And how do we get there? Well, one of the things that we can do is we can spend money on energy projects that go nowhere. And so one of the projects that we found was $1.6 billion of California government funds invested in the Ivanpah solar power facility. So the promise was, right, revolutionize clean energy. They never got there. The project actually burned fossil fuels. It never met its electricity production goals, and it caused the death of thousands of birds, which is one of the downfalls of solar. So in early 2025, PG&E canceled the project 14 years later. So all of that money was gone, $1.6 billion wasted, not to deliver what it said it was going to deliver. And you can just chalk that up to an additional expense added to the cost of energy payers in the state of California. So So there are so many examples that we've almost become desensitized to those. And we have to think about, again, both the individual examples, understanding how those happened, because that was an example of organizations without authority or accountability spending that money, without planning, without any common sense. But we also have to do what Paul talked a lot about, which is we don't need all of these agencies to do everything that they're promising to do. And they will defend themselves to the death. We have to defend the people of California on their behalf. And the thing is that, you know, you point out, we've got to keep this twin track in mind because it's the financial cost of all this, but also the regular, the financial burden and the regulatory burden, which turns into a financial burden when you're, for example, having to hire people just to do compliance. And your point about the 12 agencies that you have to deal with, I mean, I remember one of them, one of the stories that just dropped me. And now I sort of tell other people on the road and there's always someone has a version of this, a small winery in wine country. The lady there said she was expanding her patio and she needed to expand visitor numbers from 30 to 50. So she's growing successful business, more customers, 30 to 50. it took her to get compliant with that to go from 30 to 50 in terms of her permitting six years and a million dollars in fees inspections lawyers environmental impact all of this nonsense and i said you've got to be kidding me no and then i tell that story and like oh yeah we had one like that i mean it's everywhere it's just this is why people are leaving and that again bringing it back to the impact on real people. It's the cumulative effect of all of this, the fraud, because all of this means taxes go up, harder to do everything, more expensive to do everything. That's why we have, right now in California, the highest unemployment rate in America and the highest poverty rate in America. Those are the real consequences of all of this. So, Paul, just tell me what happened. I'd love to know, you know, that work was a while ago now. What happened to that? You produced a report. what you know is it there and we just have to update it what do you think yes and and uh i really have the luxury of speaking with you who's gone through this uh on your own side uh in the uk and so you know how daunting government reform can be the bureaucracy here in california i don't know if you have that in the uk but we have the public employees unions, which is even more daunting than just regular bureaucrats or special interests on the outside. So we divided our report to the governor and to the legislature into two frames. We had about 1,200 recommendations. These were sort of very specific regulatory, some legislative, but mostly executive actions that could be taken place and implemented through the departments and commissions. And then we had a separate form and function, which was a look at the boxes, as we called it. Arnold said, let's blow up the boxes. And so our concept was, let's obviously get rid of the duplication and take all like-minded departments and agencies and put them together and create super departments so that we didn't have to go through the Little Hoover and the legislature every year or every four years when a certain governor came in and wanted to realign within their silos. So at the federal level, they have departments. We call them agencies and we call them secretaries of agencies, but they're really departments. And so EPA, the secretary can go in and reorganize inside the U.S. EPA without having to go through Congress really well. Now you can't eliminate programs and such. In California, we can't do that. We have to go to the legislature. So the recommendations to answer your questions, 1200, I'd say 90% of them have been implemented. You have kiosks at Safeway for your DMV because of the California Performance Review. You don't have credit card fees for registration because the California Performance Review. Those are just some simple ones that we, believe it or not, Those didn't exist in 2005 when this came out. And there's a whole host of them. UC Berkeley did a study within two years after. So 2007, like 50% of the recommendations had been implemented by the bureaucracy that created them. The actual restructuring of the government, we created one super department, and that was in the prisons. We created a new agency super department that no subsequent secretary has said, let's reorganize within my department and take up the mantle. Because we can create, and I think every time someone's elected to whatever office, could be assessor, mayor, governor, president, They have to look and do what Jenny Ray did to her business and say, OK, are we doing what we're supposed to be doing? Are we doing it the most efficiently? And what can we do to correct it if there's a huge delta in between? I worked for General Electric for 10 years. And by the time I joined them in 2005, because Jack Welch had been CEO for so long, they had this concept down. They were the premier. I mean, bottom 10% of employees, gone every year. Assimilating, bringing in new businesses or new ideas is corollary to government. Let's create a new organization to do it, but let's assimilate them into our system. Governments inherently are more bureaucratic and the inertia is slower. And then you add on what we just talked about, stakeholders, public employee unions, and five-pips. you saw Steve in the UK you saw ministers or the next level down who knew that their organization could be a lot more efficient and potentially they could be a lot more powerful as a minister and we're still against it because they they were captive of the bureaucracy it's it makes no sense to me but it happens and it happens out in california so in other words lucky for you there's a lot of great work to be done in government reform and efficient that you as governor could take credit for once we get it accomplished yes and we and you've got to have the attitude of like blow it up i mean that's exactly right i mean my my little phrase i found myself using um on the road is i'm going to take a sledgehammer to all of this when we get to when we get to sacramento because that's how i feel you have to do it and and because the people who've been cheated um are the are the citizens of people in and they're paying the highest costs for everything um and it's it's not not okay and it's the poorest and most vulnerable in our society who pay the most and it's for them that we have to do this all right let's wrap it up and i think And I think, Steve, if I can interrupt, I think highlighting and putting so much emphasis on the fraud and abuse is the way to keep the locomotive, the slow moving locomotive of government reform moving, because that captivates people's eyes that that, you know, puts people on the nude and going to jail and is exactly what people of California are looking for. Exactly. That's why this twin track is very important. Jenny, you're going to be sitting at the head of it. And then we've got these two work streams, as it were. And, you know, as the months go by, weeks and months, we'll be publishing stories and we'll see how it goes. But what I'm excited about is we've got a really, really well qualified team to do this now. We're not waiting till we get there. I think that's really important. All right, Jen, last word to you, Jenny, about how we can, you know, just your thoughts to wrap it all up. Absolutely. First of all, just I think I've said it 10 times, but I'm thrilled to be a part of this because I wake up in the morning. I want to make real impact. So the way that I think about this is real and ruthless reform. Those are the guiding principles for me. The people that will work on this project. We already have an amazing team, both an advisory board and analysts, but other people that will join, we are excited to have you. If that wakes you up in the morning, too, there really has not been a clear voice of accountability for the state of California in the last decade. And this is an opportunity for us to point out what people should be infuriated about. They just don't know about it yet. And then what is possible for us to do. So I'm excited, Steve, to work with you and to work with the team to make these real ruthless reforms in the state. They're so necessary and so possible. And I'm really excited to put our hands to this. Very cool. Well, we'll leave it there for now, just as a quickly tick through some of those names that were just mentioned. So we've got on the advisory board, Kevin Kiley, Tony Strickland from the legislature. We've got Dan Colkey. You must know Dan very well, Paul, who is right there with Pete Wilson, Governor Wilson particularly. on the legal front very very accomplished lawyer giving me great legal advice throughout this process katie grimes editor-in-chief of the california globe jen van la from red state we got some really really stellar people here and it will grow and we'll have more because there's a lot of interest and energy in this and then the final thing i'll say just to wrap it a little fun fun thing which is in the spirit of doge and government efficiency i did a little logo which we'll put on screen for the new California Department of Government Efficiency. And I did it on Grok for free in 10 minutes. That was designed. So we didn't pay fancy consultants. Now, Steve, at the state of California, that would have been a $200,000 project with five committees. So just imagine what we can do. Yeah, that's exactly right, Paul. Six months later, $200,000, five committees. It's just a little fun example, but I wanted to do it to make that exact point that we've always got to find the quickest, cheapest way of doing anything because it's taxpayers' money and we're there to serve them. Thank you both very much. Great to see you. And we'll be seeing and hearing lots more from Kal Doj in the weeks and months ahead. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. All right, everyone. Thank you for being with us today. That was a great show. I enjoyed it very much. Excited about what's to come. Hope you can get involved in our campaign. SteveHiltonForGovernor.com We have a growing army of volunteers. Please join us. Please come to one of our town halls. meeting loads of you on the road and it's fantastic, really enjoying that. Follow us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts, of course, for this show. Join us next week for the next episode of the Steve Hilton Show and I'll see you out there on the road in California.