How Does Sen. Feinstein Death Affect the Senate?

Today on Sekulow, how does Senator Dianne Feinstein's death affect the Senate? Keeping you informed and engaged, now more than ever, this is Sekulow. We want to hear from you. Share and post your comments or call 1-800-684-3110. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

Welcome to Sekulow on this Friday. We're taking your phone calls. 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. You may have woken to the news this morning, depending on where you're listening in the country or maybe if you're just waking up. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who after voting this week in the U.S. Senate, I think on Wednesday, final public appearance there, passed away in her sleep in Washington, D.C.

So as a U.S. Senator, there's been a lot of talk about her health, of course, so she's missed a lot of time in the U.S. Senate over this past year. There's an ongoing race. She was out running for re-election at 90 years old as she passes away. So there's an ongoing primary race right now. People like Adam Schiff and others are in this race to fill her seat.

And of course, the Democrat primary is where the real kind of primary, the real fight is because whoever gets through that is likely going to be the next U.S. Senator from California. So Gavin Newsom, the governor, gets to choose on the replacement. Now, he can choose someone who's running in the primary and put his figure on the scale of kind of who he wants to be the next Senator from California, or he could just kind of choose a placeholder, someone you might not, it might be someone that works inside the politics or the government, who's, they're going to be a solid Democrat vote. We know that. They're not going to be there to make waves either, who will just finish out the term.

Now, the question goes into this. That can happen as quickly as they want. So right now, they still have a one-vote majority of the Senate. Technically, it's kind of like a two-vote majority.

If you get a tie, the vice President could come in and break that. So it's not really a concern when it comes to strict party-line votes. When it gets into more complicated issues and you throw in the fact that you've got all these Democrat senators calling for Bob Menendez to resign, then it starts getting a little dicier because then you're going to 50-50 with potentially, you know, for at least some period of time, with Harris having to vote on everything.

A year. I mean, a solid year until plus, till after the election and after inauguration. So it can affect the real controversial issues that even a few Democrat senators don't necessarily support party-line. We always talk with Menendez, we talk about the Iran deal. He was part of four senators, Democrats who voted against that.

Right now, they don't have four to lose. If something like that were to get to the Senate. We also have the shutdown talk and we will take your calls on this at 1-800-684-3110 because House Republicans, at least a chunk of House Republicans believe that this is something that the American people are going to be okay with. That this is not going to turn voters off in the next election cycle if there's a temporary government shutdown.

We'll talk about what does and doesn't get affected right off the bat when we get back from our break. If you got calls about that at 1-800-684-3110 because you're going to see Washington working basically 24 hours into the weekend. And even when the shutdown occurs, they continue working. So you can see them kind of working almost nonstop on C-SPAN trying to get spending bills through. Right now, it doesn't look like there's a path other than a continuing resolution which could keep the government open for a week or two weeks that the House and Senate agree on. It's not clear that there's enough House Republicans to see that through, by the way. They'd have to pass eight more separate appropriation bills by midnight on October 1st.

That is not just like having a vote, by the way. So I don't know that that's as likely as potentially seeing a continuing resolution though. Even that I would not bet on. It looks like we're heading towards some kind of shutdown.

How long it lasts, that always kind of remains to be seen. Sometimes they happen on these weekends and by Monday afternoon, the government's reopened, so technically it had no effect. Sometimes they last a week or two and the trash starts piling up on Capitol Hill, military pay doesn't go out.

There are checks that don't get written. Yeah, absolutely. We're taking your calls, as you said, at 1-800-684-3110. And also, we want you to go support the work of the ACLJ. Go to ACLJ.org, sign our current petition. We're trying to get over 150,000 people joined on this in the 14th Amendment claim.

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ACLJ.org. If you've got questions, call us for us about how all these issues affect you. 1-800... All right, welcome back to Secula.

We are taking your calls at 1-800-684-3110. Senator Dianne Feinstein has passed away. It was unclear for a period of time if she was even going to return to the U.S. Senate.

There was a lot of controversy when she did return about kind of elder abuse issues and this issue of when you elect a U.S. Senator, yes, they have big staffs who help advise them on policies and votes, but you are not electing that staff to make decisions. You know, we're electing that Senator to make the call, and it gets questionable when you start, when they can't even really read the piece of paper in front of them. Yeah, they don't really know what they're saying.

And it's kind of sad in a way, and abusive in some sense. And listen, this is happening on both sides of the aisle if you look at the U.S. Senate. I think Nikki Haley says it's the world's most expensive retirement home or something like that. And again, it's not unusual that the Senate is going to age older than the House. You have to be older to even be in the U.S. Senate. But at the same time, it's kind of going through a generational shift right now. There's Mitch McConnell, there's these others. They're not going to be there a decade from now.

They're not. She was elected in the early 90s, and that doesn't feel all that long ago to most of us, but really you're talking about 30-plus years ago. And if you were going in at age of 40, or going in in your mid-40s, or in your 50s even, obviously we're getting towards 80, we're getting towards 90 if you started your career in the 90s at the Senate. I mean, you've probably been working, I think she was the mayor of San Francisco and all that beforehand. Also, I think it's different when you saw sort of a change in the way she even spoke, and a lot of these people spoke when you talk about who's actually pulled the strings, who's actually making these statements. Because it went from a person who really was one of the creators of the Amber Alert system, was pretty strong on the border, a lot of those issues to becoming more and more in-line progressive. And then obviously, sadly, will be known probably to our audience for her Dogma Lives Loudly and You moment. That was one of the last times she kind of had the, I feel like since that moment, it's been a rapid decline. That was sort of the turning point. That's been a number of years ago now.

That may have been when the staff said, you don't get to just talk off the top of your head anymore. But again, you do have to question some of these issues, but voters, obviously, they sit these people back when they're 84. The bigger issue is not, listen, Gavin Newsom is going to put in a solid Democrat vote.

The question is short-term, what does it do? Well, the Senate Democrats still have a majority. They still have, now they are saying, Benendez should step down. That would put it at 50-50, but then you got the vice President at who could carry the day.

So they still have a couple of seats to play with. That doesn't really help you on issues that are real controversial. On government funding, it probably does. And so when people go to the shutdown issue, we have a lot of calls coming in about that.

Yeah, let's take one of those. And the other big issue is the Judiciary Committee. The committee itself does not have to seat a placeholder Senator. So the Democrats could lose their majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which would stop judicial, would make it much easier for Republicans to prevent liberal judicial nominees from getting approved and out of committee and onto the Senate floor for a vote. So where it could have its biggest effect is they kept her on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

If there was a Supreme Court vacancy right now, Republicans could keep, you'd end up with that weird thing where that seat was open so long ago, they'd try to put Merrick Garland in, they didn't ultimately, and Republicans held out. Towards the end of the session, yep. Let's go ahead and take a phone call. Fred's calling from Tennessee online too. Fred, you're on the air. Thank you.

Thanks for having me on. My question is, and it usually happens that when they shut down the government for however long, that it's the people on Social Security, the military, and all those people that get jerked. And I was just wondering what your take is on who's going to lose the money. Politics of shutdowns. I think that they kind of overplay what is a full government shutdown. I will tell you this, Medicare, Social Security, and VA benefits go out regardless of a shutdown. So any Democrat who's telling you you're not going to get your Social Security check, your Medicare check, or VA benefits is lying. Any politician for that matter is not telling the truth. Now, that you did talk about military pay, that's not the same as VA benefits.

So there certainly there are... It gets very politicized and they can start using kind of ranking items and kind of, I think, making the shutdown more painful for the party who initiated it by... And listen, usually the party gets blamed who's in charge. And if it originates in the House of Representatives, you can say, well, the Democrats don't want to vote on this, they don't want to vote on that. But if you have the speakership and you have the majority, even if it's slim, you are going to take the brunt of... You've got to defend why you got to this point. The interesting part right now is that I don't think Republicans are united in the House of Representatives. It's not like 99% of House Republicans want a shutdown. We're seeing a group of hardline Republicans who also want to try to kick out McCarthy next week, which takes a majority vote. And so there's a lot of politicking going on amongst the Republican Party on Capitol Hill right now, especially in the House of Representatives.

Big distractions as well. You bring up the shutdown. This is from the USA Today. They said, the military officials have already prepared Friday to cut pay for troops and civilians and close offices and activities deemed non-essential to national security as the deadline nears for the government shutdown. Obviously, expected to begin at midnight, 1201 on Sunday. So they're already prepping for this.

Yes. I mean, I think at this point, when you get to the weekend, I mean, it's Friday. I could always be surprised with a continued resolution, maybe tonight or tomorrow.

Maybe they go into shutdown for a couple of hours and they get one of those through. So they kind of have the weekend. I mean, no, technically, it starts at 1201 Sunday morning. So right at the stroke of midnight when you get to your Saturday evening. But the weekend gives them time to get through a continuing resolution.

I think right away where people don't like this is military pay. If their check was supposed to be there next week, it's not going out. So it's going to be delayed. They will ultimately be paid. And so you don't miss a paycheck.

Right. You might get two paychecks. But that doesn't mean...

I know you're delayed. A lot of people are living paycheck to paycheck right now. Yeah, we know even in the military how bad that's become. I think with this economy right now, this doesn't go over well with people.

I would not be supporting... Honestly, I know people are on both sides of this. I think you got to figure out a budget. I don't care if it's a full budget or just one of those... Keep it going for six more months, kick the can down the road. But at a time when so many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, up and down the pay scale too because of people's mortgage rates going up and interest rates going... Everything costing more. I don't know if this is going to resonate with so many Americans who are going into a general election year. When you go into a Presidential election year, you're getting a lot more voters who don't like these kind of issues.

They already think Washington's dysfunctional. Now they're like, I sent you there. You do these shutdowns. You want to get rid of the speaker.

Why don't you deal with the issues that American people care about? So we'll take your calls at 1-800-684-3110. We go back to the phones. All right, let's continue on. Let's go to Randy who's calling on line one. Randy, you're on the air. Hey, how you doing, man?

Thank you for having me chat for a minute. I really don't think America is ready for a shutdown. It's not going to happen. I think they're smarter than that. I mean, if they do, I think the people who work on Capitol Hill and stuff will have enough money in the bank to live on for two months. And then if it goes that far, I think they're going to come to a solution and take a couple of things out because it's already, you know, like the 10 toes of Daniel because they're messing with the constitution so much and taking out their religious stuff. It's not no stability there anyway.

So they got to get some stability back in the mouth. Yeah, I do think this makes the country feel unstable. But it's happened many times in our lives.

Many times. And there's usually short-term political consequences and not long-term. Yeah, it's a scarier word. We might be so far away from the next year lecture that it really doesn't impact it. I don't know that people are going to remember this if it's for three days or a week. They're probably not going to remember that moment unless what they always warn you about is if God forbid something catastrophic happens in the middle of one of these and you're going to, you know, you're sending people off to war but you're not sending them a paycheck. So they're going to go die for the country, put themselves in harm's way for the country. Of course, they've also zeroed out Ukraine funding. So you won't get your military payments. The Ukraine military will. Meaning that, yeah, to clarify, no funding is going to be made.

All funding will still be processed. That's one of the exceptions to the rules, the exemptions. All right, we can take another one more quick call. Give us a call. 1-800-684-3110. Like all these calls coming in. Bill in Wyoming on Line 3. You're on the air.

Hi, thanks for letting me talk to you today. As far as the shutdown goes, I'm kind of in the gray area because of the fact that it all depends upon how it's handled, if you ask me, because of the fact the blowback on either side can really be devastating. And didn't we have a technical shutdown when Obama sequestered the government? I might be wrong on that, but did we or did we not? Yeah, I believe we did. Yeah, we did. Was that the last shutdown? Was it Obama? I believe so.

I'll check. It's been a while. It has been longer than it feels. I feel like for a while they were, maybe under Obama they were happy more regularly because of Obamacare. There were a lot of CRs. There were a lot of weekends where it would like shut down for a couple days too, like you said. And they would kind of kick the can down the road. I remember that over and over again. And I think, listen, ultimately everybody's going to get paid.

Ultimately this doesn't have the same consequences that they kind of usually say. There was a government shutdown at the end of 2018. There was another one. It went on for 35 days, yeah.

35 days? Yeah, it was one of the longest. What was that about? That was about, I'll have to look it up. Showdown has become less common in recent decades, but it was the longest in more than 40 years was the last one.

So we'll see what goes, but I'll find out. I remember the trash piling up. Yeah, I know. That was that one I think.

All right, 1-800-684-3110. But see, you remember it, but it's not even, it's still a blip because 30 days in five years, you know, a lot has happened in your life. Right. A lot of changes.

And that was over Christmas and to New Year's, so people weren't paying really even that as much attention. All right, 1-800-684-3110. Tell me what your thoughts are. All right, 1-800-684-3110. That's 1-800-684-3110. Yeah, if you do look at how the history of government shutdowns, I mean, they basically happened every year, multiple times a year in the 80s. I feel like we grew up hearing about government shutdowns a lot.

Yeah, 81, 82, twice in 82, 83, 84, twice, 86, 87, 90, 95, 295. Then you go jump forward to 2013 on Obamacare and 2018 over the wall. This one is a little bit more difficult to, I think this is just on spending in general, then you've got everybody's got kind of their pet project issues. Is it Ukraine funding? Is it border funding? Is it military funding? There was a legislation to pass to take the Secretary of Defense's pay down to $1 a year because he's not doing his job. I think he's focusing too much on diversity and equity and inclusion and not enough on actual protecting our country and building the military. So they've done that.

Ultimately, it's kind of a hodgepodge. There is some kind of breaking news to report though. The House Republicans on Friday did advance a GOP stopgap bill to avoid a government shutdown. That clears a procedural hurdle that some Republicans did oppose the legislation.

The chamber voted 218 to 210. That only kicks off the debate. They will then have a final vote. So we're going to kind of know by this afternoon, Logan, if the House is able to get the votes together to prevent a shutdown.

I mean, basically, that doesn't do it, but it lets them have a vote on it by the end of the day. Yes. I mean, there's a lot happening. So you go into the weekend with a good indication of is it shutting down or not? Yeah.

It'll be nice to have maybe some of those answers and the fact that, look, that's why we're live. We can report these things as they happen. But we talked about the break. It does also feel like there's chaos whether it's in the House or the Senate. There's always this sort of mess happening right now. It seems like it's never business as usual. Now, it's always, we got to replace McCarthy.

We got to shut down the government. We have something else happening that ultimately a lot of it feels like distraction. Yeah. Listen, I don't know the point of you're placing Kevin McCarthy with his deputy, the majority whip, someone from leadership. Are you going to get Democrat votes for that? Yeah.

It's a good show. You've got to question that. Every House Republican is not going to vote to remove Kevin McCarthy. I'm not sure Democrats are going to help Republicans put in someone they think is more conservative.

So is it just to embarrass or drag out? Again, this is Republicans with a lot of issues. We're very honest on this broadcast. The Democrats are the minority in the House. So you can try to get their votes for things, but they don't have to necessarily be helpful.

We'll take your calls 1-800-684-3110 on the shutdown issue. We talked to the Feinstein issue, I think, again, there. Gavin Newsom can appoint someone if you want to today. The only thing that really affects, it's only going to be about a year because you've got the primary already going there. The only real effect you could see, which is significant, is in the Judiciary Committee. Republicans don't have to allow that senator because they weren't elected to join the committee, so to replace her seat. And they don't have to let Democrats put someone else forward. So it could get complicated there on getting judicial nominees through, and you never know when there's going to be a vacancy. There's always vacancies in the appellate courts and district courts, but even at the U.S. Supreme Court. So there are always what-if situations.

So I don't want to play down that it doesn't mean anything. It is a very slim Democrat majority in the U.S. Senate right now. So any controversial legislation, they're not going to be able to lose votes. They were kind of already at that point, but even more so now that you've got the Feinstein gone and at least some period of time probably be replaced very quickly.

But then you've got the push also with that call too for Menendez to step down, another Senate Democrat. So we'll continue taking phone calls at 1-800-684-3012. Let's go to Sam in Kentucky online too. Sam, you're on the air. Oh, yes, gentlemen.

Thank you for checking my call. I guess I don't understand when the whole Congress has known that, you know, September 30th is coming. That date hasn't changed in many, many years. And they take six weeks off starting late July through August up to Labor Day. I don't understand why they didn't stay and get the job done before they took- To be honest, the congressional recess is not six weeks off for them. It's a recess out of Washington, D.C. and the business in Congress.

By the way, they can always come back if they want to and they have before in history. It's actually a time they're supposed to be back to you. So Sam, we actually cut that time out so that there's a period of time where they don't have an excuse not to be in their constituency. So if you're a member of the House, you might take a few days of that as your vacation, but really you're supposed to be, and most people do, holding public events, attending events locally, talking to your constituents. So if we didn't have that period of time, they'd all go to Washington and they'd forget about who they represented. I mean, let's be honest, both sides of the aisle. Because it's easy to start doing that in Washington because if you don't keep your connection to home.

So that recess, while I think we live in a modern time where we have air travel and we have things, you could probably update a lot of these rules and it probably doesn't need to be six, maybe it doesn't need to be six weeks. And you're right about one thing too. They know this deadline's coming. So it's not like, at the same time, there are a group of House Republicans, Logan, that have caused, they've been troublemakers.

Yeah. And that seems to be, it's kind of hard to gauge where people are on that. I think a lot of people like it. They like the individuals sometimes. They like the results.

They like the chaos of it going, all right, it's kind of like when they put McCarthy in. The amount of people that, there was a lot of people on board. How many hours did we watch that for? I mean, it was days. It was days, but a lot of people were on board with it going, you know what? We need to be breaking the system anyway. We should be doing this. And then a lot of the other of us were going, okay, get on with it. We know how this is going to end. So let's quit wasting time.

And I think that's more where I always land, which is quit wasting time. I mean, I like the showmanship. I like the UK parliamentary side of this, but come on, let's actually get the job done.

Especially when you're at a time when Americans are hurting. Yeah. All right. Back to the phones. We go Barbara and Utah you're on the air. Hey Barbara. Hi.

Thank you. Um, I hope they do shut the government down. I think, I think that's the appropriate response to all this. Every time they do a CR, they're just ways to spend more money, which they don't have. If I run out of money, I don't get to spend more money and they shouldn't either.

Yeah. Listen, I did the spending is out of control and I have no issue with that. I think if you could actually get enough people elected to start cutting government spending, that's a good thing and getting towards a balanced budget. I think the debt issue does hurt the country. When you see the debt issues, when you look at the interest rate issues, all of it, I think where people freak out on this is not any disagreement. What you just said Barbara, or what I just said about the government spending money it doesn't have, and really that's our money. And then our money becomes less valuable. Interest rates go up. The dollar is less valuable. I mean, that is, we see that time and time again through history. And we're kind of used to being a country where eventually the dollar comes back roaring and you kind of forget about it.

You move on, but we're in a different time right now. I think where people are questioning, I mean, the invasion of Ukraine was the ultimate. I think the biggest, the biggest move that would be like the downfall of the US would be if China really did invade Taiwan, that would be the ultimate America doesn't matter. And it doesn't matter, but is it the superpower that could really tell the world what you can and can't do to some extent? Obviously there's bad things happening all over the world.

We can't solve all of them, but the big thing. So you're not going to cross the United States of America or any of their allies. And what you saw in Russia was a kind of a crossing of a quasi-ally. Yeah, always kind of. Well, just since the end of the cold war has not been fully on, it's been a rough country also.

And also a lot of countries. We are going to keep taking your phone calls. We love taking your phone calls today on Friday. It's nice to actually hear from you guys. What's your point of view is phone lines are jammed right now, but they will open up 1-800-684-3110. We have second half hour coming up on Sekulow as well.

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That's at ACLJ.org. Be right back. Keeping you informed and engaged. Now more than ever, this is Sekulow. And now your host, Jordan Sekulow.

100-684-3110 to join us on this Friday. People have a lot of thoughts, which I expect they would on the government shutdown issue. You also have the death of US Senator Dianne Feinstein. It's not shocking that she passed away at 90.

No. I think if you saw her recently. She was on the floor two days ago. But yeah, she wasn't. She passed away in DC. She didn't pass away in California.

So she was working until she died. There was a lot of question over the last couple of years about whether or not she should be there. And again, California voters did decide when she was, I guess, 84 to reelect someone who was 84 to a six-year term. And so voters get to make those decisions.

Now, if you ask what happens, all states are different. California, the governor just gets to appoint the person. So Gavin Newsom gets to pick the placeholder. I would imagine he's not going to pick anybody running in the primary right now because she wasn't running for reelection. You had Adam Schiff and others running to replace her in the US Senate. The Democrat primary is, of course, the whole game in California right now.

Probably somebody like her chief of staff or somebody from his team. They're going to be a solid Democrat vote. They're not going to make waves. They're going to vote with them. Disappear for a year, essentially.

Yes. Now, where this gets tougher for them is on the Judiciary Committee. She had a very important seat on that committee, which approves judicial nominees and gets them to the floor of the Senate for a full confirmation vote. And Republicans don't have to allow her replacement to fill that seat. So it could even that up, making it more difficult to get judicial nominees to the floor of the US Senate. So that's where the issue is there.

I think the bigger issue to the American people right now, and listen, maybe the fine-scene issue pushes the shutdown over. Maybe these kind of things are what Washington says with the goofiness people. Because even if you were somebody who worked in politics a long time, you knew her.

It didn't matter what side of the aisle you were on. And so her staff, a lot of these people too, if they're 90, their staffs are in their 70s. Some of their top staff could have been Washington for a very long time.

And I don't know. I thought it was interesting that while we were on the air, House Republicans were able to pass, which people didn't even know they would get that, to be able to start opening debate on a continuing resolution. It doesn't fund the government for a year.

It's not a full budget. It's kind of what we've gotten used to, honestly. Let me at least put pause.

It gives them opportunity to stop the shutdown, actually stop the shutdown from happening before we even get much closer, which is tomorrow at midnight. Yeah. All right, let's continue on taking the calls. We got a lot of calls coming in. And as soon as we take one, a phone line clears up. So keep calling. That's 1-800-684-3110.

Let's go to Colleen in Kentucky. You're on the air. Hi, thanks for taking my call.

Longtime listener, first time caller. And I just wanted to say that I know we all worry about the active duty and the veterans and all of those people getting paid, but I want everybody to remember when we do have those shutdowns, all those contract workers, they don't get those back pays. They don't get that retroactive paycheck.

They just go without the paycheck. And like you said, everybody going paycheck to paycheck makes it hard. And I just want to make sure everybody remembers that. And I fully understand the complexities of what's going on. And we don't want to pass something that we don't agree with and just something for food for thought.

And thanks so much for taking my call. Yeah, I don't generally like these shutdowns. I think that politically they hurt the party, who is responsible for them. You can always say, well, it's not really the Republicans, the Democrats don't want to vote for it. But again, if you're the party in charge, if you have the majority, even how slim it might be, and you can't get the budget out of your House of Congress, and this is the House of Representatives, you take the blame.

I'm not a huge fan of them. I do understand the concerns about the spending out of control, but I think to get to the spending under control, you have to win elections. I think you have to deal in reality. The reality is we have a slim majority of the House. We didn't take back the Senate and we lost the White House. Maybe we can change all of that in a year.

It's possible. You have to get a lot of people, but I'm not sure if these are the way you get new people or that group of independent voters, which is smaller and smaller in the country, to actually come on your side and get out and cast a vote for you. All right, we are continuing. Take your calls 1-800-684-3110.

It's been a fun show hearing from all of you and your points of view. Two lines are open right now. Get 1-800-684-3110. Support the work of the ACLJ by visiting ACLJ.org. Not only can you financially support some of the petitions, but look at the incredible just free content that we provide you, whether that is video, audio, whether that is incredible blogs and stories.

Just go look at ACLJ.org. It's a treasure trove there. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Secula. We are taking your calls to 1-800-684-3110.

That's 1-800-684-3110. There's a lot of talk, obviously, of the government shutdown. Do we get there? It's pretty close to saying you ring the alarm bell because they are going to have a vote this afternoon in the House on a continuing resolution. I don't think they have the votes for it yet. They had votes to get to the debate. That was 218 to 210, so pretty close, but I don't think they have the votes to actually get that passed as of right now. By this afternoon, that may have changed.

By tomorrow, that could change. More and more pressure, more and more deals get cut, but it looks like the way around the government shutdown right now is going to be one of those continuing resolutions. It's not going to be these full appropriations.

You're kicking the can down the road, but you're going to be facing these issues again. I think that people, for the most part, we've heard from government employees that it does affect. If you're not a government employee, I think you say, I don't know if I care about this right now, but if you're someone who is on any kind of government benefit, you start freaking out. They don't make it real clear to the Social Security checks. They don't make it real clear about Medicare. They don't make it real clear about VA benefits, but those don't stop. Military pay does stop. Yeah, I think that should affect a lot of people. Most government, if you work for the federal government all over the country, you're not getting paid.

Yeah, that's pretty wild. So think about that when you're really talking about whether you want a government shutdown. Like the lights go off. There's no bills being paid.

The trash doesn't get picked up. Yeah. What about like the postal service? What about those kinds of things? That's something to check in.

No, because things still get delivered because you got to deliver the checks. That's an exception there. Yeah, I think so. Right. That's kind of like Amtrak. Okay. Well, I didn't know. There's obviously something going on there. I'm just curious about those kinds of things.

The DMV. Amazon will just charge some 50 million dollars. Yeah, exactly. A minute to do it. All right, let's keep going. Let's go through some more calls. Jeremy, Oregon line five.

You're up. I just want to say that when they gave them Kevin McCarthy, the speakership, it was under other conditions that he would give the power back more to the people and how they've been governed in the first class. You know, a couple of decades, the speaker kind of just controlled everything and do whatever he wants. I mean, he can't do whatever he wants. You have control about some legislation, but ultimately, if you have the votes to get things done in Congress, you get to do what you want, but you have to get the votes together. I mean, it's a very powerful position. I'm not trying to say it's not.

He did ultimately get the position. When you say power to the people, we elect these representatives. We don't get a direct vote. It's not direct democracy in America. It's a republic. So these are people that represent you at all these different levels.

And ultimately, they have to answer to you for their actions. And most of the country, it's pretty divided. Like you either live in a red area or blue area. There's not too many.

There's some left, but not many that are kind of 50-50. Like cities and areas? Yeah, even congressional districts. Yeah, it's pretty clear.

Usually for the most part, I mean, at least in major. There's some states left, if you will, where you could talk about the US Senate races, where it's a little more 50-50. You're talking about the House of Representatives.

You know, if you live in a blue district or a red one, if you follow politics, if you would follow who your member of Congress is. Continuing on, let's go. Which most people can't name. Yeah.

Still. Don't quiz me. Kathy's calling on line one. You're on the air. Thank you very much for what you guys do.

And thank you for taking my call. But my question is, is that I keep thinking the first three words of the Constitution is, are we the people? The question I have is, okay, right now you guys are doing an awesome job of fighting for former President Trump, who I'm going to be voting for, whether he's on the ballot or not. But the thing is, is that if the Democrats are trying to push this on Trump, why can't we do the same thing to Biden? Okay. One is, I don't think we want to do that, right? We don't believe that what they're doing is right. So we're not going to take a 14th Amendment and tell people they can't support, they can't vote for Joe Biden. This was the concern that I think a lot of people had, which is the, if Democrats do it, the Republicans are just going to do it.

And it's going to go back and forth forever. And all of a sudden you trivialize everything. Everything. You trivialize impeachment. You trivialize what it means to run for office. You start having your Republican secretary of state or Democrat secretary of state decide who's on the ballot.

You can get into issues. You don't go to their level. What we want to fight for is a fair fight, an honest election. Just give me the opportunity to take my message to the American people and let them vote. Count their votes, let them decide who they want to vote for. Don't try to preemptively decide if a random secretary of state in one state decides this person could violate the constitution.

You can remove them without any kind of due process. And so that's what we're fighting. I don't think we seek to their level. I honestly believe that impeachment here yesterday or inquiry here kind of showed that. When you just kind of hold them tit for tat, listen, they looked just almost as bad as the Democrats did when they were trying to come up with a reason to impeach Trump. Yeah, trying to come up with reasons that... Well, the Republicans called three witnesses and all three witnesses under oath testified that there was enough information to actually support impeachment.

So that did not look great. I don't know who put together those witnesses, but they should be fired. Absolutely. All right.

Let's go. There's a lot of people on the Republican side of strategy that need to be fired. I don't know who are advising these members of Congress. Yeah, they blow it when it comes to these kind of situations. They always, they blow it. They go on TV. They say they have great evidence.

It's never great. The Democrats are better at a lot of this. They just are. Well, they're better, even if they don't have the evidence, they're better at getting the messaging out that they have the evidence.

So then when the actual evidence comes out and there's nothing there, that part doesn't get reported. Yeah. And they unite. Yep.

They're a much more united party. Let's go ahead and take a call from Elma, who is calling in Texas. You're on the air. Okay, great. Thank you guys for taking my call.

No problem. And I wanted to relate to you that I've been bombarded by the Republicans. I'm sorry, Elma. You were on hold for a long time.

So I'll put you back on hold and we're going to try to get to you, but we just could not really get a clear signal from you. Can we go to Jimmy real quick? Let's go to Jimmy in Arkansas line three. Jimmy, you're on the air.

Yes, sir. Thank you guys for letting me speak on those things. And I wanted to thank the Holy Warriors at ACLJ for what they do and others also, Judicial Watch and other ones like that, that stand in the gap, make up the heads. But my thing is that Mr. McCarthy's going through a bad thing and he is, and that's between him, God, and his wife. But when things that are bad like that allow these snakes, these rhino snakes, to rain their heads.

I better jump in. I don't think we should comment on that. I don't know if that's one of the reasons. I think they just don't care for the way he deals with Democrats, really. No, they don't think he's being tough enough on this or that. I don't think it's personal, like that personal.

I haven't heard anything personal. I haven't looked at it, to be honest. Have you seen that?

I follow a lot of... Yes. Yeah.

So I'm not really sure you're over there. Is Elma ready? We need to check on her still. We still need to check on her. I did know what she said.

We'll wait a couple of minutes. After those, if we don't get her back, which is she's being bombarded with fundraising. And that is true because of the new system set up by both the Republican and Democrat parties, where basically fundraising flows through one system. So if you donate to one Republican, you can basically get all the other Republicans' requests. And when you got multi-party candidate primaries going through, they allow all the candidates to move through. So there is an inundation.

I think you have to look before you click to make sure your donation is going to who you want it to go to. Yep. Let's go ahead and just tell you guys, we have one segment coming up and we'd love to take your calls today. We have a couple lines still open. 1-800-684-3110. We've gone through so many and probably dozens of calls already today.

The most we've taken in maybe years. So we love hearing from you though. 1-800-684-3110. And in the next segment usually is when we get to all our calls, but today we've been going through them the whole time to try to clear up lines so more people could call. This is a good opportunity.

1-800-684-3110. Also, Jordan, I know a lot of people obviously tuned in because of the news and how we can break down what's going on, the situation going on with the passing of Senator Feinstein. But we're also currently in the middle of our 14th Amendment battle and we have a lot of cases going on. Maybe people don't know that there are some updates happening right now potentially in Colorado. We did finally a motion to dismiss in Colorado today.

A response to a motion to dismiss. We intervened successfully in West Virginia this week representing the West Virginia Republican Party. We're in Minnesota as well, finding an amicus brief there.

And three of these lawsuits were parties in the lawsuit representing Republican parties. And that's, again, we talked about Oklahoma, Colorado, West Virginia. In Minnesota, we're going to file an amicus brief there. So we're taking each state, we're looking at the best strategy to move forward. But the idea here is to beat this down. This idea that, again, you're going to be told that you can't vote for Donald Trump in the primary.

And it's about Donald Trump this election, but as these state parties that we represent are asserting, this has big ramifications for the future. And as some of you call it, that there's always the feeling that you want to just respond tit for tat, that you want to say, well, if they do it, let's do it to them. And that's really not, I don't think that's the American way to move forward. You don't just, you don't seek to their level.

I mean, on every tactic at least. I mean, and I think impeachment's one of those. I think trying to tell people that they can't even decide who they want in their primary to represent them in their party is another one of those issues. And that's where fighting back is your right to vote. And it has the implications obviously for this election, but it also has that huge implications for the future because if they are given this kind of power, you will not be deciding who your candidates are. So state to state, a Democrat secretary of state's going to decide who Republicans get to vote for. A Republican secretary of state's going to decide who Democrats get to vote for.

It's just not right. 1-800-684-3110 to join us on the air, support the work of the ACLJ. We moved our petition goal up to 150,000.

We want you to join it at ACLJ.org to protect your right to vote. Our 1-800-684-3110 final segment of The Broncos has been a quick show today. We let the caller do all the heavy lifting.

That's the fun part. You should call more because you know what? We don't have to talk as much. Let's go ahead and help the vocal cords. Yeah, we do have three lines open right now because we've taken so many calls.

1-800-684-3110. Let's fill those up with your comments either on your questions about the government shutdown, your questions about the passing of Dianne Feinstein, what that means. I will take those or any of the topics we covered this week. We're happy to discuss them. Let's go ahead and go to Kimberly who's calling in Pennsylvania. You're on the air. Hey, good afternoon. I wanted to make the comment specifically that since I am a Department of Defense public servant to the people but yet a citizen of this country myself, so I think this shutdown absolutely positively has to happen. It's going to affect me. I'm going to lose my pay temporarily but we are sick to death of the bureaucracy in our government in D.C. and the games McCarthy and company are playing.

I am a Scott Perry fan from Pennsylvania and the Freedom Caucus. Let me just say one more thing. We do not want to see these billions keep being fed to Ukraine so this has to happen. Yeah, I think it's an interesting and very honest comment for someone who, listen, your livelihood is tied, you're a federal contractor on DoD and you're talking about the Ukraine money. I think, listen, there are honest real issues. I think why you have to wait till two days before a shutdown to address them is what upsets the American people in general.

That's why we had a lot of callers say they know where the deadline is. So I think if you're very in tune with politics, I think you are, but you understand some of this is because you can't get even attention on these issues until you get close to a shutdown. People won't ignore it. They don't want to spend the time on those issues. Honestly, the funding to Ukraine is not going to be affected by this. We know that. So even if you're someone who's really concerned about that, that's not going to be where it's going to be saved.

I don't love the fact that the money goes there but the American people have to worry about getting their checks. That I don't love. That's a concern.

Don't love that. Don't love the optics of that either because you let someone write that into a political ad next year. And again, I'm not against the Freedom Caucus. We're very conservative.

We're the ACLJ. I mean, it's just, tactically, we get outplayed in Washington how many times? Just ask yourself, how many times have Republicans won the tactical battles in DC? I can't answer one.

Can't answer. I mean, ultimately, we were able to beat back the impeachment of Donald Trump, but he got impeached by the House. Because every Democrat voted to impeach him, basically, except for two or three. Right now, there's not enough House Republicans to vote to impeach Joe Biden. They're trying to have an impeachment.

They're tactically failures. Yeah, at least at some point, maybe, I guess, the Republicans can look at it and go, are we being honest with what the claims are? Now, I'm not saying there's other things that he couldn't be impeached over. Claims, right. But the current claims that they're bringing- Can you prove them in court?

Yeah. And if you couldn't prove them in court, how are you going to prove it to the American people? Which is even, actually, technically, should be easier because you don't have to have the same standards as court. But they got three witnesses yesterday who all went up there. These were witnesses Republicans chose, and it makes you scratch your head and go, God, these guys, again, three witnesses who got up there and when they got under oath, had to say, nope, there's not enough grounds for impeachment here. And I don't know if you'll ever be able to find the information.

I don't know if you'll be able to find the information. Yeah. All right, let's go ahead and take the next call. Let's go to Renee, who's calling in Arizona.

I spent six hours on that two days before a government shutdown. Oh, you saw them. I saw them at the end of the night, just pretty beat from their hard day of investigation. Let's go to Renee, who's calling from Arizona online too.

You're on the air. Hi, I'm just wondering, what do we need to do to get all of the GOP together in Washington, DC, rather than to be so doggone splintered? Yeah, I mean, listen, I think the Republican party is always going to be a more splintered party because we're a bigger tent party. So the Democrat, and that's kind of shifted over history, but we're right now, the party has a mix of interventionalist internationally and populist and anti-interventionalist. We're the party of Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell from the same state, both Republicans, but on paper, they have some big politics. Now, on some issues, probably 80% of issues agree, but that 20% is a pretty big 20%. It's like a Kentucky General's got that. But think about it, that's the same party, same state.

Very different people, very different ways. Give us a call, 1-800-684-3110. Let's go to Leetta, who's calling from Colorado on line three. Leetta, you're on the air.

Yes, thank you. I want to thank you all for what you're doing in reporting and fighting our government in Colorado and the other states that are not allowing candidates to be put onto the ballot. It feels very unconstitutional to me and totally wrong. Listen, this is what we believe. It's unconstitutional. We think it violates due process. We think it actually violates the principles of the 14th Amendment. It violates a lot of state laws that are on the books.

And again, this is interference with the primary process. You got to give the Democrats credit. They go for the jugular, and it's not just Democrats. I think this is also a problem with Washington. And when people say, oh, what's wrong with all the Republicans? Remember, it is Republican lawyers in Washington, DC who are funding these efforts to take Donald Trump off the ballot.

I'll repeat that again. Republican lawyers in Washington, DC, the most high profile well-known in the political world, you're not going to see them on TV, but names you know if you're in politics at big Republican law firms are helping and assisting the effort of liberal Democrats to prevent Donald Trump from going on the ballot because he isn't good for their business because he hasn't hired them. Yeah, and I think that should be a wake-up call for a lot of people, really what happens in Washington, DC. And the Republican Party, which I just said, it is not the Republican Party you probably think it is.

And look how they treated Donald Trump even, the Republican Party. That's so great. Well, and now we're currently on this situation with the 14th Amendment. I think this gives us a good opportunity as we wrap up the show, Jordan, to discuss what we're doing currently and how people can get involved. Obviously, these cases, listen, we start and it gets a lot of attention in the news, in the media, and you've got to actually battle it out. That's what we do with the ACLJ. We're not just talking about it for the two days it's important in the media, but we want to make sure that your right to vote is not infringed on in this election.

And these are, you cannot just take these and kind of just shrug your shoulder and say, I think we'll win these out ultimately. These are strategically filed in some of these states where they think they've got a secretary of state who will say, I think Donald Trump committed insurrection, so I'm going to take, I'm not going to count the votes. And so you've got to be willing to fight this out all the way to the US Supreme Court if necessary. So we filed representing state Republican parties in Colorado, West Virginia, Oklahoma. In Minnesota, we're going to be filing an amicus brief.

We filed the initial motion there. And there again is where it's important to sign our petition. So on that, we're really representing you, the ACLJ members who have signed the petition. Over 100,000 people have done that at ACLJ.org. We're working to get to, it's a big number to get to on a petition to 150,000, Logan.

We celebrated it. We're going to continue these cases. We're working with more states too behind the scenes.

And ultimately this could be decided by the United States Supreme Court, especially if you get some of these liberal states and liberal state court systems who are ruling against you all the way. So you've got to be ready. And I say it's the long-term battle. It's a long short-term battle here. So you have to have a lot of resources to deploy very quickly because these are all cases that are moving at the most rapid pace possible because they have to be determined before ballots are printed for the primary.

Yeah, that's coming up really quick. So go to ACLJ.org right now. Sign that petition. Try to hit 150,000 currently, sitting around 109,000.

So that's great. We're well on the way there, but you need to be a part of it. Also, while you're there, please support the work of the ACLJ and please tell your friends, text your friends this petition, share it on social media. If you've already signed it, that's a great way to also engage, not just through sign it being done. Make sure you tell people about it and get them to sign as well. Go to ACLJ.org, donate now, stop the selection plot, but also just really join us and look at the incredible work that's happening at the ACLJ at ACLJ.org.

I always say that, but I mean it. You can go over there. Sure. I want you to sign the petition. Absolutely. I want you to donate and support the work. That's how we able to keep this broadcast going, how we able to get all these legal cases going. However, look at the incredible content that we have available to you.